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ITN
BA issues fresh Terminal 5 apology
BA issues fresh Terminal 5 apology
British Airways has issued another apology for its Terminal 5 fiasco as it tried to start reuniting thousands of travellers with their bags.Chief executive Willie Walsh said the airline was holding 19,000 bags in temporary storage and hoped to start returning 5,000 of them to their owners.But he warned it would take some time to return all the bags because they had to be processed manually.BA is cancelling 50 flights from T5 today after scrapping 54 flights on Monday.Mr Walsh admitted that T5's first day was a "disaster" and said he was "bitterly disappointed" it was not the success it should have been.But he said he had received some letters from passengers who "loved" the new terminal."We've had about 200,000 people go through T5. I know the press will portray this as Heathrow chaos," he said."But for many of those people it will have been a pleasant experience and I remain very confident that Terminal 5 will deliver."It is a fantastic facility, we can make it work. But I have to admit we got it completely wrong on day one."Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick told the House of Commons that passengers using the new £4.3 billion terminal had suffered "an unacceptably poor experience".Passengers should get the assistance and compensation to which they were entitled, he said.Mr Fitzpatrick said that T5's baggage system had become "clogged" and had stopped functioning on a number of occasions in the days since the terminal opened last Thursday.Analysts believe the baggage problems that wrecked the terminal's opening days could cost BA between £20 million and £50 million.
ITN | April 1, 2008
