Guidelines for longhaul flights Terminal move

British Airways’ long haul flight move to Terminal 5 on April 30 has been delayed

(In addition to the guidelines below there is a further advise for those customers who have a transfer booking between 30 April and 25 October 2008 at the end of this page).

British Airways and BAA (airport authority for London Heathrow) have agreed to defer the planned move of the airline’s long haul flights from Heathrow’s Terminal 4 to Terminal 5. The relocation of flights was originally scheduled for 30 April but will now begin in June. 

Although we have seen a steady improvement at Terminal 5, we want to be sure that customers can be confident of high service standards when the terminal is handling larger numbers of passengers.

Both the British Airport Authority (BAA) and BA recognise that the opening of Terminal 5 has not been as smooth as we would have wished. We will be working with BAA to iron out any remaining problems, including the baggage system, and develop a robust timescale for phasing the move of Terminal 4 services in to Terminal 5. We believe it is only sensible to make sure that Terminal 5 is operating consistently at a high standard before the move begins.

We do not underestimate the uncertainty and inconvenience this delay may cause your customers/employees if they have already planned your trip in this period. Our priority is to continue making improvements to achieve the high levels of service our customers expect as soon as possible.

We will be updating our systems over the course of the next week so that the GDSs reflect the changes we are making as quickly as possible.

We will provide more details of the move as soon as possible as we review progress of the improvements being made.

A small number of long haul flights have already moved to Terminal 5. These will be unaffected by the delay to the move of other flights.

What to do if you have customers booked to travel on a long haul flight previously expected to operate from Terminal 5 after April 30

We will provide details as soon as possible about our plans to move long haul flights into Terminal 5. This will begin in June. Until this time, the majority of our long haul flights will continue to operate from Terminal 4.

IMPORTANT: We will be updating the booking systems. The new terminal information will not be displayed in the GDSs or in Manage My Booking until this is complete. This may take up to a week from today (April 10).

You may need to remind customers that if their terminal has changed, they may need to change their ground transport arrangements.

What to do if you have customers transferring to long haul flights now operating from Terminal 4 after 30 April:

The minimum time we allow to connect to flights between Heathrow Terminals 4 and 5 is two hours.

We will be updating systems over the course of the next week to reflect the longer connection times for flights between Terminals 4 and 5 for customers travelling between 30 April and 25 October 2008.

This may affect some customers who will now have insufficient time to make their onward connection.

If you have customers/employees who are affected by this, you will be notified through the GDS that this is the case so that you can provide the customer with details of their new travel itinerary.

Process for managing customers who have been affected by longer connection times:

We have put in place a commercial policy to help you make the necessary changes to customers’ bookings affected by the longer flight connection time between Terminals 4 and 5. The policy applies ONLY to bookings between 30 April and 25 October 2008:

Advice for customers

Under the British Airways conditions of carriage the customer is entitled to:

a.) Rebook onto the next available flight operated by British Airways at no additional cost; or

b.) Claim a full refund of any unused parts of their tickets

• Customers should be rebooked on the first available flight operated by British Airways in the same booking class or if this is not available, the lowest available booking but in the same cabin.
• The ticket will need to be reissued/revalidated with the following comment in the PNR and on the ticket: “connecting segment rebooked due T5 move”
• We will not charge a service fee for rebooking direct or trade bookings
• Agents can rebook their customers in the same way or refer them to British Airways
• British Airways will not be responsible for any other costs

We will provide more details of the move as soon as possible, including details of our commercial policy.

Customers booked to travel on long haul flights currently expected to operate from Terminal 5 from June.

Some long haul flights have already moved to Terminal 5 and these will be unaffected.

These are:

Hong Kong	Johannesburg	Los Angeles
Miami	San Francisco	Tokyo
Vancouver

Our remaining long haul flights will continue to operate from Terminal 4 until further notice.

We will be working the BAA to agree the phasing to move our long haul flights to Terminal 5 and we will provide details of this as soon as possible. This will not be before June.

We have made the decision to defer the move so that we can be confident we will be able to deliver high levels of service when the terminal is handling larger number of customers.

Which Heathrow terminal?

Flights already operating to and from Terminal 1	Flights already operating to and from Terminal 5
Barcelona	All UK domestic destinations
Madrid	All other European destinations
Lisbon	Tripoli
Nice	Hong Kong
Helsinki	Johannesburg
	Los Angeles
The above flights will move to Terminal 3 on September 17	Miami
	San Francisco
	Tokyo
	Vancouver

Long haul flights operating from Terminal 4 are:
Abu Dhabi - Muscat	Delhi	Montreal
Abuja	Denver	Mumbai (Bombay)
Accra	Dhaka	Nairobi
Bahrain – Doha	Dubai	Nassau - Grand Cayman
Baltimore	Entebbe	Newark
Bangalore	Houston	Philadelphia
Beijing	Islamabad	Phoenix
Boston	JFK	Rio De Janeiro
Cairo	Kolkata (Calcutta)	Sao Paulo - Buenos Aires
Calgary	Kuwait	Seattle
Cape Town	Lagos	Shanghai
Chennai	Luanda	Tel-Aviv
Chicago	Lusaka	Toronto
Dallas	Mauritius	Washington
Dar Es Salaam	Mexico	-

There is an addition to the guidelines for those customers who have a transfer booking between 30 April and 16 September, that is now within minimum connection times due to the delay of switch 2.

The addition applies only to those customers whose outbound journey started before 11 April 2008 when the delay to switch 2 was announced, and whose:

• return journey connects through Terminal 5, and
• connecting flight is now within the minimum connection times due to the delay of switch 2.

Advice for customers

If the customer is booked on journey that connects through Terminal 5 (e.g. SFO - LHR - DAC - LHR - SFO) and

• a sector of their return flight is cancelled as it now falls within the minimum connecting times (e.g. LHR - SFO), and
• the next available flight to the required destination is the following day (e.g. SFO), then
• the customer should be rebooked and advised to report to Flight Connections upon arrival at the airport where they will be given hotel and meal vouchers for the night.

Please note: this only applies to those customers whose outbound journey started before 11 April 2008.