A disaster waiting to happen

I take no pleasure from commenting on the terminal 5 fiasco, due to the fact that so many paying travellers have been caught up in this.

As my small band of readers know I have been ranting about BA and BAA for over a year. Willie Walsh is at the top of an organisation that is breathtaking in its incompetence and duplicity. 'Not BA's finest hour', I cannot think of many fine hours at all. The BA flight to Kuwait on the eve of the Iraqi invasion, endangering passengers lives to put a special forces team in on the ground (had the MOD no aircraft available ?) the dirty tricks against Virgin and Laker , the constant queues, cancellations, unhelpful staff. Hours spent on the phone trying to get alternative flights when I receive an SMS that my son's flight had been cancelled on Christmas Eve, 'sorry for the inconvenience' it said- another BA understatement.
As a frequent business traveller, I have seen the grandiose PR in their literature about Terminal 5, I have received the emails foretelling a shiny future, any business traveller knew this was pure hokum, as they walked past piles of misdirected or late luggage in baggage reclaim.
What BA fail to understand is that whilst they have a shiny new terminal its the same low standard of people operating it, and they are not shiny. I do not mean the front line troops but the clipboard holders of which BA is full of, from Willie Walsh down.
As soon as the fingerprinting proposal was outed, I told BA frequent flyer that I would not use this terminal, I also protested to BAA. I also took the precaution of moving my business flights from BA to Air France. I can now fly from Bristol to either Schipol or Charles De Gaulle, and from Monday on Lufthansa to Frankfurt.
I would advise anybody to take the same routes and stay away from a national disgrace, that is in the wrong place. Eventually a plane is going to come down in central London,because of planning cowardice on the part of the Government, an overloaded airport and safety margins pared to the bone.
There should be no third runway at Heathrow, if a new airport is needed it is where it should have been thirty five years ago, Maplin Sands, with a high speed link to London by Rail.
The BAA monopoly needs breaking up immediately, and as in the case of the Food and Mouth farago, the MOD needs to put in charge to prevent a civil aviation disaster.
UPDATE
The Citation that crashed into two houses on its approach to Biggin Hill, is a timely reminder that housing estates and aircraft full of aviation spirit do no mix. It is time a courageous decision was made.