Heathrow's new Olympic Terminal opens
Aviation Minister Theresa Villiers attends the opening of Heathrow's dedicated Olympics terminal.
Heathrow’s new Olympic Terminal opens
Transcript
Nick Cole, Head of Olympic Operations, Heathrow: The terminal has taken 5 months to build but its been planned for well over 2 years. On the 13 August we anticipate to have our busiest day ever for departing passengers. That means we will process 137,800 passengers and also 200,000 bags. And the intent is that 10,000 of the world’s athletes will use the facility you see behind me, and the reason we have done that is because we will be busy on those days and we want to ensure that passengers using Terminals 1, 3, 4 and 5 get their normal high levels of service. Now if we do this and we get 10,000 athletes through this facility it means that everybody else in the other terminals will feel just like it’s a busy summer day here at Heathrow. There are lots of other things that Heathrow is doing; the terminal you see behind me is just a part of that. We’re doing remote checking down in the athlete’s village the day before the closing ceremony. We’ve also recruited a thousand volunteers from the local community to come and work with us at games time and that’s a legacy we hope to leave after the games itself. The other sorts of things we’ll be doing is ensuring we’ve got lots of desks and other things where the Olympic family can go to, to get all their needs seen to as they come to Heathrow.
Theresa Villiers, Minister of State for Transport: I think this temporary terminal is very impressive, its not quite finished yet because the construction is finished but the operational side of it is yet to be launched but I’m very impressed with it because the three days after the closing ceremony are going to exceptionally busy for London’s airports particularly Heathrow. The 13 August is expected to be the busiest day in the whole history of the airport, 10,000 athletes, coaches and support staff are going to be coming through this temporary terminal and having this extra departure capacity i think is going to be very important in ensuring that Heathrow can cope with that huge volume of departing passengers over those few days after the closing ceremony.
BAA: So the baton really is moving from one BAA department to another, so this is really coming from our capital team who have delivered the buildings to the operator.
BAA: The games terminal special though it is, is only a part of what we’re doing. People will be working tirelessly in Terminals 1, 3, 4 and 5. On our air fields, on our roads, on our forecourts, in our baggage systems and down in the Athletes Village. They all have an equally important job to do. We here at team Heathrow are proud to play our small part in making sure that the London 2012 games are the greatest games ever. Thank you.