Heathrow Britain's Busiest Airport Series 7: Episode 3 Wednesday 24th March 2021

this is heathrow only one runway is operational and two of its four terminals are closed but the airport is still open you can hear it quiet though depleted their army of staff are ready to get passengers bums back on seats it's just emotional good to see passengers whether it's keeping the airport super sanitized or keeping the travelers suitably swabbed just head back a little bit against the odds and with unprecedented challenges around every corner i'm fearful that the us is going to start canceling flights it's been a nightmare heathrow has to pull out all the stops i hope i don't need the claim now to remain the jewel in the country's aviation crown extremely emotional dealing with suspicious packages in cargo no matter what you try sending through this machine we are going to find it and suspect passengers in the terminal yeah we've got him on the floor heathrow's finest i'm not sure let me get straight are doing their best whatever comes their way because this is still britain's busiest airport challenging but this is the best part of the job it's the end of 2020 and heathrow is on the cusp of christmas having said adios to lockdowns the airport's two runways are now back in action with the prospect of more flights in another boost for aviation the uk government has announced a five-day window where people can travel freely and mix with other households just come here and i'll look after you ek 30. all right all right have a good christmas all right take care so with an increase in footfall expected the passenger experience managers are out in force i'm glad to see the passengers the places are open we up for business i'm traveling to uh russia just gonna spend time with my daughter trying to get away from christmas i'm not seeing all year because i've covered i'm traveling to dubai because it's where my parents live and i'm just going home for the holidays terminal 2 is now home to over 75 airlines but it's nothing king of the customer service demi can't handle do you want to carry moving on man thank you very much cheers don't forget this is probably one of the busiest times of the year and it's usually it's like 10 times busier literally you could say it's busy but it doesn't even touch the sides to be honest with you having been granted a christmas reprieve heathrow needs to start recouping some of its 2 billion pounds in lost revenue and on the shop floor over in terminal 5 is passenger experience manager taz during this period it is usually busy because you've got a lot of families trying to fly out but um yeah at the moment fairly quiet steady tas has been working in terminal five heathrow's busiest terminal for over four years the reason why i wanted to join the airport was uh just the environment how busy it can be and how fast place it is i mean my mom helped me join duty-free she encouraged me to apply and work there as well duty-free makes up a sizable part of heathrow's income 342 million pounds last year to be precise but with only essential shops open for most of the year the takings so far add up to just 97 million i started off in um confectionary chocolates see i like my standard chocolate snickers has to be the best but um when it comes to confectionery probably say lint yeah by far yeah before lockdowns terminal 5 was host to 40 of all departing flights that's one taking off every minute usually the board on the right side and usually the left as well is all full but at the moment you can just see this there's one board and a quarter so there's not even that four compared to what we usually have so it's going to be extremely quiet today [Music] at the start of the pandemic major airlines scaled back operations by up to 80 in a bid to curb the cash flow some even sold off their slots to other airlines slots give permission to use the airport infrastructure and are hard to come by at heathrow [Music] but one airline did come by them and they're british and new to terminal 2. good afternoon eastern eastern eastern airways run one flight a day to that lesser-known english riviera teasside and doing their best to make the airline's first ever christmas at heathrow at cracker our check-in team patrick and emmanuel all right when you're ready sir you'd like to step forward have you got any christmas crackers in your hand like a job package today it's the first time in over 10 years that aircraft have flown from heathrow to t side and eastern's success here is dependent on planes brimming with passengers it's beginning to look a lot like christmas aspect nice smiles by the way so um do you think we'll have lots of bags today because of christmas presents it should be expected no present this year no presents they can't have cracker on isn't it no they can't take crackers lots of chocolate but they can keep us chocolate due to their flammable nature passengers are discouraged from bringing crackers on board and after a month of no flights at heathrow for eastern patrick is determined to pull off a successful departure the t-side flight is special because it's my first one to go from london to somewhere in england so it's it's a special flight for me it's yesterday i had 13 passengers the day before i had nine passengers and today i've got 47. we go nine nine checkpoints so nine checks left nine yeah it's another 38 to go so the loads gone down to 43 instead of 47 a single trip from london to t side costs the airline around six thousand pounds the price for the passenger is an average of a hundred and fifteen pounds meaning eastern's seventy-six seater jet needs to be at least seventy percent full to break even is he going back for crystal sure going home going home for christmas yeah have a good flight there man okay have a nice christmas what are you going to today i'm going to turn these dolly okay just need your id please yes thank you the flight it's down to booked to 43 passengers and we've accepted 19. thank you they're still missing 23 24. not all the passengers turn up but hopefully because it's two days before christmas we get a full load it's yours thank you please merry christmas [Music] before the pandemic heathrow had over 206 destinations on offer with new york not t-side being its busiest route now quarantine free dubai tops the list of popular places people are looking forward to flying to today we must i'm afraid look again at christmas and as prime minister it's my duty to take difficult decisions to do what is right to protect the people of this country but the best laid plans of these passengers are about to go seriously awry it is with a very heavy heart i must tell you we cannot continue with christmas as planned a new more infectious strain of coronavirus has been found in the uk causing the government to scrap the five-day travel window and they're not the only ones taking action from victor three go seven ahead a heads up for you swedenborg has closed its border the stockholm flights will now be cancelled all passengers are going to be called very shortly to date alpha 21 and uh they'll be landed there there's approximately 160 pounds is your information copy last week's update more than 40 countries have banned flights and travel from the uk in a bid to stop the mutant strain of kobe 19 crossing their borders france germany italy spain portugal ireland belgium austria finland poland denmark switzerland romania and croatia quite a lot of countries actually i wonder what that means for the airport not only is london being placed in a stricter tier with essential travel only countries are closing their doors to the uk with flights being instantly cancelled and heathrow now has a pile of passengers heading their way we booked these tickets more than a month ago we can't visit our families now because we're going to be stuck here in london i'm very disappointed with israel an expression i'm very disappointed with boris johnson i'm going back home early because i'm fearful that the u.s is going to start cancelling flights like the european union is what do you think of the recent tier changes from my perspective it's necessary i mean i think there should be even more stringents on it and just say look everybody's got to stay at home period shut everything down including heathrow if you really want to get it under control i mean a lot of people are going to have to spend christmas on their own here some people don't have a place to stay i mean i'll be okay i can find a place in london but a lot of people don't it's been very difficult because when you've got your family abroad and you just want to unlock them and you can't even do that anymore because you don't know if you can be on the next plane he really does i've been missing my mom so much because i haven't seen her so many months and now i can't even go to see them and it's been a nightmare for everyone a new coved variant has put a question mark over passenger travel but luckily in cargo it's business as usual allowing airlines to make some much needed cash transporting goods such as air mail and at air world a cargo handling company for heathrow december is peak season with international post increasing by over 30 percent so basically this is the screening center we screen mail cargo freight so all the pallets will go through our bigger machine this small machine would run the small bags one by one through assistant security manager shane and his team are responsible for ensuring all post is thoroughly scrutinized before being allowed on border plane so it's really important for us to search each bag thoroughly as we can on the machine to make sure there's nothing in there that's going to endanger people in the aircraft that's our main priority here at airworld so any ieds anything that's going to cause harm to anyone on that aircraft we need to make sure we find it and it doesn't go and it doesn't fly this x-ray is designed to detect ieds that's improvised explosive devices these could be anything inside there obviously you can't see that the machine can so it could be teddy bears in there it's christmas time now so you're going to be getting all your presents being sent worldwide so obviously they need to be checked which my colleagues doing now make sure that's fit to fly for the aircraft if something was dense and you cannot see it you would have to perform either a hand search a visual check maybe even etd which is a swab test i've got something to say almost done here yeah just roll that through luke just to find which bag that was to identify it if anything untoward like an ied is suspected by shane and his team then they would have to evacuate the building and call the police just run this back for a different angle luke and just see whether you can penetrate it from a different angle it could be a number of things to me it looks like maybe some nut and bolts it's quite solid and compact but it's really difficult to see this class is dense so this could be a potential ied most likely probably not but we're not willing to take the risk it's over cautious but we have to be being extra vigilant means this bag of post will now be escalated to a full security check it may only be one suspect letter but will result in hundreds of items being delayed do you feel bad because it could be like it could be a christmas present yeah it could be a christmas present but then again just because it's christmas present we're not going to take the risk we're doing our job 100 it could if it's a valuable item it could be anything that's completely irrelevant to us while some may not receive their christmas presents or nuts and bolts in time for the big day it's all in the name of keeping passengers safe last one of that shipment luke people do try and send all sorts of things through to try and sneak it through the system but and when you've got good good x-rays fully trained they're going to find them so no matter what you try sending through this machine we are going to find it having removed any suspect bags shane's shipment is now fit to fly oh let's go but over in terminal 5. [Music] passenger planes are grounded sweden has just closed their borders which has resulted in this flight being cancelled so yeah a lot of these pastors will now have to either get rebooked to a different destination or go home a new coved variant detected in kent has led over 40 countries to ban all flights from the uk and taz now has 160 stranded passengers on his hands and what's now are we waiting for something or can we so now the next step will be they will take you down to flight connections to immigration for all the people that are looking to now land themselves and go out they can go through immigration and there will also be an area where they will provide you with hotel accommodation if needed or rebooking but rebooking for what rebooking to either a different location maybe nearby or but nearby denmark's closed norway is closed finland's closed then it'd be possible so what would it be more than germany take it ferry over no i don't know what every booking makes no sense wait i can only apologize to be honest this stockholm play was my last opportunity to get home and now a lot of people are going to be disappointed if i don't get home for christmas basically now they're saying like we have to collect our luggage and just leave the airport but i'm not a uk citizen i have nowhere to go here i just want to go home to my home country i want to go to denmark i want to go home what happens if you can't fly i don't know i don't really know where to go and what about tomorrow it's a government thing there so they closed the border right but how can they make a decision like this when there were flights going this morning sweden's uk border bound is set to last 48 hours and passengers will be offered hotel accommodation until another flight becomes available if and when the situation changes if you're helpless to be honest uh with a sort of situation like this if it was a normal flight cancellation there's probably leeway of lounge access and everything else and if you get re-booked on another aircraft you can give that sort of welfare but with these passengers a lot of it is down to um the government in stockholm and everything else closing their ball down is literally the airlines are feeling a lot of pressure and obviously these passages are definitely very feeling the experience of it as well the pressure continues in terminal 2 where demi is dealing with his biggest crowd of the year as a record 45 countries have now banned flights from the uk the latest being pakistan is the airline responsibility even though they're not the airline sir they're not the ones denying you travel it's the uk going from uk to pakistan have to be in pakistan by midnight tonight i understand we traveled all the way from three hours drive from leicester to london heathrow so they are saying that if you have a pakistani passport with a visa or british passport you cannot travel only if you have the visitor visa business visa and you are transiting you can travel only otherwise you cannot travel the ban in pakistan taking effect at midnight applies not just to uk citizens but any pakistani nationals who have been in the uk for ten days or more if the government says they're closing the borders they're closing the borders you don't go nowhere it doesn't matter how much money you have even if you have money for a private jet you're not going to go to pakistan because it's not about the money it's not it's about the the pandemic and pakistan are doing to protect the border it's a very political and very sensitive subject you know i mean we're not going to go uh or sort of like override what our government has requested you know some kind of respect and mutual consent between airlines airports and countries with the pakistan ban set to last for seven days the only option for these passengers is to rebook when the border reopens even with his superpowers king demi's hands are tied we've never been in this situation before so i'd like to be honest and sometimes it can be quite upsetting to hear the truth do you feel sorry for something oh god absolutely yeah yeah definitely we'll do what we can to help you in my opinion in cases like that just be honest and tell the truth don't don't fluff it up and say maybe listen maybe mate the flight's cancelled you ain't going anywhere but do it in a nice way and say listen if there's anything i can do to help i'll try and we'll give him some numbers we'll give him some contacts but that's it there's not a lot you can do over 50 of all flights out of heathrow are now grounded but one border that is definitely still open is the north east of england on time looking for a an on-time departure a 40-minute flight and um yeah we'll get them home soon at the start of the day 47 passengers were booked to fly on this 76 seater jet yeah go ahead yeah um can we have the passengers please all right copy that but so far only 19 have turned up right anyone traveling on eastern airlines good afternoon we're ready to bolt if you'd like to come forward with your boarding cards and passports please to mark easton's first christmas at heathrow check-in officer patrick is embracing the festive spirit and everyone have a lovely christmas thank you normally i'm bar hamburg but i'd say merry christmas to everyone on this yep straight down there let's go and you have a nice christmas sir we probably would have done the announcement merry christmas everyone but saying to 18 or 19 passengers is more personal so it's nicer and how many people are actually checked in now 19. let me just 19. yeah let me just have a quick look if you don't mind 19 so the other 24 didn't show up not the christmas cracker patrick was hoping for but at least he'll be able to get the flight away ban on time all passengers on board so we just got to wait for stairs off doors closed it's due to depart at ten past six this is what happens when you have the a team soon as that tank pushes it then it's departing what time is it now eight minutes past oh we're gonna cut that fine so yeah it's showing 11 minutes past but he turned these breaks off at 10 party well as always next year hopefully merry christmas and a happy new year [Music] well keep your passports up to date as britain's busiest airport is scheduled to fly back into your living rooms later in the year but you don't need your passport for where we're heading next stay there for coronation street

Channel: News And Factual

Views: 178,925

Rating: 4.8686037 out of 5

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Id: fHs9FFH7r8g

Length: 22min 9sec (1329 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021