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.

Airport Information Heathrow

Heathrow Airport, without a doubt is one of the busiest airports in the world.

We set here bits and pieces of Information about Heathrow Airport.

Heathrow Airport is the primary hub of BMI and British Airways, and is a base for Virgin Atlantic Airways.

Heathrow Airport handels almost 67 million annual passengers,the busiest single destination in terms of passenger numbers is New York, with over 3.7 million passengers travelling between Heathrow and JFK / Newark airports.

The airport has five passenger terminals (Terminals 1, 3, 4 and 5) and a cargo terminal , but only four of them are operational for the momemnt as Terminal 2 is closed. The new Terminal 2 is set for reopening on 2014.

Heathrow history is fascinating and it’s design just as much. ,in the 1950s, Heathrow had six runways, arranged in three pairs at different angles in the shape of a hexagram with the permanent passenger terminal in the centre and the older terminal along the north edge of the field, and two of its runways would always be within 30° of the wind direction. As the required length for runways has grown, Heathrow now has just two parallel runways running east–west.

Policing  the airport is not an easy task and responsible to protect  is the aviation security unit of the Metropolitan Police, although the army, including armoured vehicles of the Household Cavalry, has occasionally been deployed at the airport during periods of heightened security. You’ll have the opportunity to see them during the London Olympics 2012 , when security officers will doubled in numbers.

Full body scanners are now used at the airport and passengers who object to their use are not allowed to fly.

Along with the arrays of shops and restaurants, from your daily Costa to the world-known Gordon’s restaurant , from Boots to Ralph Lauren ,Heathrow Airport has Anglican, Catholic, Free Church of Scotland, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh chaplains.

There is a multi-faith prayer room and counselling room in each terminal in addition to St. George's Interdenominational Chapel located in an underground bunker adjacent to the old control tower, where Christian services take place.

Also Heathrow airport has its own resident press corps, consisting of six photographers and one TV crew, serving all the major newspapers and television stations around the world.

Airbridges at Terminal 5Aircraft destined for Heathrow usually enter its airspace via one of four main reporting points: Bovingdon (BNN) over Hertfordshire, Lambourne (LAM) over Essex, Biggin Hill (BIG) over Bromley and Ockham (OCK) over Surrey.

When the airport is busy, aircraft orbit in the associated hold patterns.

Air traffic controllers at Heathrow Approach Control (based in Swanwick, Hampshire) then guide the aircraft to their final approach, merging aircraft from the four holds into a single stream of traffic, sometimes as close as 2.5 nautical miles (4.6 km; 2.9 mi) apart. Considerable use is made of continuous descent approach techniques to minimise the environmental effects of incoming aircraft, particularly at night. Once an aircraft is established on its final approach, control is handed over to Heathrow Tower.

The centralised waiting area is in Terminal 3 because aircraft generate significantly more noise on departure than when landing, there is a preference for westerly operations during daylight. In this mode, aircraft depart towards the west and approach from the east over London, thereby minimising the impact of noise on the most densely populated areas. Heathrow's two runways generally operate in segregated mode, whereby arriving aircraft are allocated to one runway and departing aircraft to the other. For example ,to further reduce noise nuisance to people beneath the approach and departure routes, the use of some runways is swapped at 15:00 each day if the wind is from the west. Occasionally, landings are allowed on the nominated departure runway, to help reduce airborne delays and to position landing aircraft closer to their terminal, thus reducing taxi times.