And one thing can be certain - there will be much said and indeed much
to say about it. Already BAA have put the plan to fingerprint all
passengers flying from T5 on hold because of concerns over compliance
with data protection laws, whilst anti-third runway protesters plan on
holding a 'flash mob protest' at T5 at 11am today.

Main BBC News online story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7314816.stm

BBC News - BA pioneer to land first T5 plane
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7313093.stm

BBC News - Heathrow fingerprint plan on hold
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7315415.stm


BAA has produced a fairly comprehensive and reasonably informative
Terminal 5 information pack, which can be read or downloaded via this
link (PDF):

http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...fo_packnew.pdf


The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts, along
with the obligatory comparisons of elements of T5 with pre-existing
'big things' - however, whilst some such comparisons are ridiculed,
the fact that the T5 site is stated to be the equivalent area to Hyde
Park did catch my imagination (though maybe that just merely proves
I'm a bit of a simpleton...).

And anyone who decides that the unit of comparison for the amount of
steel in the roof is to be bull elephants wins my respect! (It's 2,833
bull elephants worth of steel, by the way - and you'd better get used
to it, as this is the unit which Lakshmi Mittal is apparently
considering switching to.)

Lots of other things of note in there. I particularly liked the choice
of the type of tree that was chosen for the area outside the main
entrance to the terminal building - the 40 woody perennials in
question are of course London Plane trees.

In message
, at
18:59:34 on Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:
http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...fo_packnew.pdf


The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts

"The TTS station is underground, and passengers travelling from
Terminal 5B descend to the station via the longest open design
escalator in Europe. It will take 90 seconds to travel on the
escalator which has a vertical rise of 21.75 metres.

Does that beat the escalator at Angel Tube station? What's an "open
design" escalator, anyway; and where is the presumably longer "not open
design" escalator somewhere else in Europe?
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message
,
at 18:59:34 on Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Mizter T
remarked:
http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...fo_packnew.pdf


The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts

"The TTS station is underground, and passengers travelling from
Terminal 5B descend to the station via the longest open design
escalator in Europe. It will take 90 seconds to travel on the
escalator which has a vertical rise of 21.75 metres.

Does that beat the escalator at Angel Tube station?

No - Angel rises 27.4 m in 60m length - less than the Tyne Foot Tunnel at
25.9 in 60m too. I guess open design just means the underside is visible
(through glass perhaps).

Of course London 'records' are often a little dubious, like the recent
'first ever' bowstring arch railway bridge!

Paul S

On 27 Mar, 01:59, Mizter T wrote:

And one thing can be certain - there will be much said and indeed much
to say about it. Already BAA have put the plan to fingerprint all
passengers flying from T5 on hold because of concerns over compliance
with data protection laws, whilst anti-third runway protesters plan on
holding a 'flash mob protest' at T5 at 11am today.

(snip)

When I wrote the above post I almost included a comment along the
lines of 'wonder how long it'll take for it to go SNAFU', but then
decided that T5 should be given the benefit of the doubt. After all,
I'd read about extensive testing of the baggage handling facilities
that had been going on for months before opening, and the T5
information pack does state that whilst the new system is state of the
art, it does not use any untested technologies because of the
increased risk for foul-ups.

However things have not gone to plan today at T5 - the baggage
handling system is causing grief - some highlights....

* delays of up to four hours in getting arriving baggage onto the
luggage carousels
* seven flights have taken off without passengers' baggage on board
* 34 flights cancelled so far

....and now all baggage check-in has been suspended (BBC report as of
1720).

Of course these glitches will be sorted over the coming days and weeks.

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message
, at
18:59:34 on Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:
http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...fo_packnew.pdf


The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts

"The TTS station is underground, and passengers travelling from
Terminal 5B descend to the station via the longest open design
escalator in Europe. It will take 90 seconds to travel on the
escalator which has a vertical rise of 21.75 metres.

Does that beat the escalator at Angel Tube station? What's an "open
design" escalator, anyway; and where is the presumably longer "not open
design" escalator somewhere else in Europe?
--

Do you mean Western Europe? Because the escalators on the Budapest metro are
quite deep.

In message , at
21:04:39 on Thu, 27 Mar 2008, remarked:
http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...fo_packnew.pdf


The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts

"The TTS station is underground, and passengers travelling from
Terminal 5B descend to the station via the longest open design
escalator in Europe. It will take 90 seconds to travel on the
escalator which has a vertical rise of 21.75 metres.

Does that beat the escalator at Angel Tube station? What's an "open
design" escalator, anyway; and where is the presumably longer "not open
design" escalator somewhere else in Europe?

Do you mean Western Europe? Because the escalators on the Budapest metro are
quite deep.

The words belong to the Terminal 5 brochure.

Moszkva tér (square) metro station in Budapest is mentioned as having
very long escalators, but I can't find a figure.

I recall that Prague has some pretty deep tube lines too. Not sure if
individual escalators exceed Angel, though.

Moscow metro's longest escalator is 126 m (Park Pobedy), apparently
[wikipedia]. More than twice the Angel. A different source says the
Ukraine has the longest escalator at 87m.
--
Roland Perry

On 27 Mar, 01:59, Mizter T wrote:
And one thing can be certain - there will be much said and indeed much
to say about it. Already BAA have put the plan to fingerprint all
passengers flying from T5 on hold because of concerns over compliance
with data protection laws, whilst anti-third runway protesters plan on
holding a 'flash mob protest' at T5 at 11am today.

Main BBC News online story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7314816.stm

BBC News - BA pioneer to land first T5 plane
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7313093.stm

BBC News - Heathrow fingerprint plan on hold
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7315415.stm

BAA has produced a fairly comprehensive and reasonably informative
Terminal 5 information pack, which can be read or downloaded via this
link (PDF):

http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...20Files/T5_Inf...

The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts, along
with the obligatory comparisons of elements of T5 with pre-existing
'big things' - however, whilst some such comparisons are ridiculed,
the fact that the T5 site is stated to be the equivalent area to Hyde
Park did catch my imagination (though maybe that just merely proves
I'm a bit of a simpleton...).

And anyone who decides that the unit of comparison for the amount of
steel in the roof is to be bull elephants wins my respect! (It's 2,833
bull elephants worth of steel, by the way - and you'd better get used
to it, as this is the unit which Lakshmi Mittal is apparently
considering switching to.)

Lots of other things of note in there. I particularly liked the choice
of the type of tree that was chosen for the area outside the main
entrance to the terminal building - the 40 woody perennials in
question are of course London Plane trees.

Where can I find an update to
http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...ers_map_05.pdf
showing which bus services are free along the perimeter roads of the
airport now that Terminal 5 is open?

On Mar 27, 9:46 pm, Roland Perry wrote:
Moscow metro's longest escalator is 126 m (Park Pobedy), apparently
[wikipedia]. More than twice the Angel. A different source says the
Ukraine has the longest escalator at 87m.

Theres a couple of stations on the Kiev metro (Dnipra, Arsenelna) that
are seriously deep because they're in the side of a cliff with 2 sets
of escalators to go down, both probably longer than Angel though thats
a guess on my part just based on what I saw. I've been told they were
designed as nuclear bunkers. They're certainly very impressive to look
at.

B2003

On Mar 27, 10:15*am, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
18:59:34 on Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Mizter T remarked:

http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...20Files/T5_Inf...

The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts

* * * * "The TTS station is underground, and passengers travelling from
* * * * Terminal 5B descend to the station via the longest open design
* * * * escalator in Europe. It will take 90 seconds to travel on the
* * * * escalator which has a vertical rise of 21.75 metres.

Does that beat the escalator at Angel Tube station? What's an "open
design" escalator, anyway; and where is the presumably longer "not open
design" escalator somewhere else in Europe?

I presume they mean it's not in a closed shaft, like Angel's is - this
one is in a very large atrium, with open space above and below.

There's a photo at http://flickr.com/photos/22819720@N02/2307578958/

- martin

In message
, at
09:48:34 on Sat, 29 Mar 2008, martin
remarked:
What's an "open design" escalator, anyway; and where is the
presumably longer "not open design" escalator somewhere else in Europe?

I presume they mean it's not in a closed shaft, like Angel's is - this
one is in a very large atrium, with open space above and below.

There's a photo at http://flickr.com/photos/22819720@N02/2307578958/

There seems to be a lot of "going up and down" mentioned with respect to
T5. I understand they don't have the space to make it flat like
Stansted, but couldn't they have kept it more on one floor (one each for
arrivals and departures), like Gatwick North?
--
Roland Perry