The last year has been a challenging year at Heathrow. More demanding security requirements have placed greater pressure on our facilities and resources and this has meant our standards of service have not always been as good as they should have been.

The graph below shows the trend of passenger responses to the question ‘How would you rate your overall experience in this terminal/airport today?’ The results are plotted at quarterly intervals between January 2005 to December 2007. The figure shows that the average results throughout 2007 ranged from 3.88 to 3.92 on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = extremely poor and 5 = excellent. The scores have remained steady over the past few years with no significant improvement or decline.

Reducing security queuing

Security queuing has been a real focus in our drive to improve the airport experience for our passengers. As part of the QSM survey, passengers are asked to rate the length of time they spent queuing at departure and transfer security search areas on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 = extremely poor and 5 = excellent.

The graph shows the moving annual average of passenger responses at Heathrow, plotted at quarterly intervals, between the last quarter of 2004 and December 2007. The scores dipped slightly in 2006 following the introduction of increased security requirements in August 2006. Scores began to recover in 2007 mainly due to improvements in security. We have recruited over a 1,000 new security officers and are now beginning to see the benefits of our investment with improving feedback from passengers and few people having to queue for more than ten minutes.

The number of security lanes will increase with  the opening of Terminal 5. We hope to see the QSM figures for security queue time rating continue to improve during 2008. We are also trialing technology which could
reduce waiting times at security, including body scanning technology and iris identification.

Improving facilities

As well as improving security queuing, in 2007 we opened the newly modernised Terminal 3 forecourt which will reduce traffic congestion, provide better pedestrian routes and improve security in the front of the building.

Terminal 5 also opened in March 2008, which will in time provide a world-class facility for passengers using Heathrow. The new terminal will handle nearly all of British Airways’ flights and passengers which will alleviate congestion and create a better environment for passengers. It will also provide the space needed to start rebuilding and refurbishing the rest of the airport.

Issues and approach
Our plans