London’s Heathrow Airport opened its new terminal five to great fan fare. The new terminal is state of the art and will be the new home of all the British Air flights into London. The implementation of the Open Skies treaty was even delayed so this terminal could be finished. Work on this terminal (including planning) has been going on for 20 years. But, the terminal opening has been plagued with problems.

In the chaos that is terminal 5 at least 430 flights have been cancelled and 20,000 bags have been lost in the first week of operation.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

About 6 percent of the baggage British Airways has handled in the past four days still has yet to reach its owners, the spokeswoman said. The carrier, Europe’s third-biggest, is already Europe’s worst airline for lost luggage and the second-worst for delayed bags, according to the Air Transport Users Council.

The term national embarrassment has been used by the British Press. The Times Online has published a web site with a game where you too can be a baggage handler at Heathrow to see just how hard it is. I see the problem, either the game was broken or it was a good simulation of the problem as I was not able to deliverer a single bag.

To make matters worse for the Heathrow reputation, Time published a story recently about the the number of homeless who have taken up residence in the airport and the Sun published a story that 4 cups of coffee at Heathrow can cost up to £361,514.97.

The new terminal was built at a cost of 4.3 billion pounds which is over 11,894 cups of coffee. So if they can sell 11,890 more they can pay off the whole project.