Information about Heathrow Airport

The most anticipated sport event of 2012 is closing in. With just few months away everyone starts to prepare for this event.

Heathrow Airport will be the first and last impression of the London 2012 Games for millions of visitors.

A massive task for Heathrow Airport, they will not only have to control the passenger’s traffic flaw but to keep them safe as well.

Heathrow Airport designed a special Games Terminal for athletes departing from the Olympic Games.

The Games Terminal will be the departure point for 10,100 athletes and, along with bag collection from the Olympic and Paralympic Village, will help the airport to manage the huge increase in departing bags and passengers anticipated on the day after the closing ceremony. 13 August 2012 is expected to be the busiest day in the airport’s history, and Heathrow is forecasting 35 per cent more departing bags than on a normal day.

 Another challenge for Heathrow Airport will to disembarking a large number of passengers with reduced mobility from aircraft, where a  45 per cent increase from the usual arriving passengers on 26 July(the day before the Opening Ceremony) is expected.

Well they knew is coming and they’ve prepared for is, because Heathrow’s plans include:

• Offering check-in and baggage collection at the Olympic and Paralympic Village;
• Building extra lifts to reunite Paralympians with their wheelchairs on arrival;
• Recruiting and training 1,000 volunteers to meet and greet passengers arriving for the Games and assisting all passengers on their journey;
• Construction of a dedicated Games Terminal for athletes departing after the Olympic Games;
• Making multilingual staff available for arriving and departing passengers;
• Providing media facilities where journalists can file stories.

Heathrows’ 1,000 recruit Team volunteers will help with the special events over the next few months, including London 2012 and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

In return they could be greeting athletes and VIPs, helping spectators find their way and managing fans waiting for a peek of their heroes.

There will be dedicated lanes provided by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) for all accredited Games Family members, athletes, coaches,officials, accredited media and other individuals.

UKBA will offer a flexible solution that will allow it to ‘switch’ Games passenger lanes on and off as required to ensure the balance of desks provided to business as usual and Games guests meet passenger needs. UKBA is also creating a pool of volunteers to work at Heathrow to ensure an efficient border

control process during the peak arrivals period.When all passengers arrive at the border they should ensure they have all documents ready to present to a border officer. There will be signs in the arrival hall which will direct passengers to the appropriate passport desk.

More direct passengers and fewer transfers will put extra pressure on departure security search areas. To ensure there are no additional delays at security in the main terminals the security lanes will be designed to process as many passengers as early as possible to prevent queue build up. Options such us opening the lanes earlier and close them later than planned are takne into consideration.

At peak times all security lanes will be open. The Paralympic Games will affect the main terminal security screening operations as it generally takes longer to process wheelchair users and other passengers with reduced mobility (PRM). Therefore more lanes will be modified to accept PRMs; they consider that  the most effective way is of staffing the areas to help cope with this additional demand.