Heathrow Airport has suffered an embarrassing baggage system breakdown within Terminal 5, which handles more than 100,000 passengers per day during peak periods, and is classed as the home of British Airways.
The ongoing baggage failure came on the same day that the airport promised to offer passengers a “faster, smoother, better” experience through a £10 billion investment plan over a five-year period starting in 2027.
Terminal 5’s baggage system stopped working several hours before Heathrow made the announcement, with access to the departures concourse restricted as staff lined up row upon row of bags that could not be checked in.
British Airways has warned passengers that their baggage might not make it to their destination today, while Heathrow is yet to provide an update on when the system might be back up and running.
And yet, Heathrow is now promising to be an “extraordinary airport” with promises to ensure that 99% of bags make it onto the same flight as their owner.
The £10 billion privately funded investment will also seek to ensure that 80% of flights depart on time, and that 95% of passengers only have to wait five minutes or less to clear the security checkpoint.
Heathrow Investment In Numbers
- £10 billion to be invested between 2027 and 2031.
- Heathrow will be able to handle 10 million more passengers a year.
- Capacity increase of 12% without any expansion.
- Cargo capacity increase of 20%.
All of this will be achieved without initially expanding any of the existing terminals, but instead unlocking existing space equivalent to the size of ten football pitches to make way for… You guessed it… more shops, as well as premium lounges and food concessions.
In the near future, however, Heathrow plans to demolish the decommissioned Terminal 1 building, which shut down all the way back in 2015, and will massively expand its newer Terminal 2 building.
The new investment is on top of an already announced £2.3 billion accelerated investment and upgrade program that will run until 2027. Part of that money is going to fix the airport’s problem-prone baggage system.
Presumably, some of the money for all of this investment will be coming from Saudi Arabia’s government-owned Public Investment Fund, which acquired a 15% stake in Heathrow late last year.
Heathrow had been previously majority owned by the Spanish construction conglomerate Ferrovial, which invested in the airport in 2006 in the hope that a third runway was about to be approved by the UK government.
The third runway would have allowed Ferrovial to cash in on a massive building boom, but instead, the runway project kept on getting delayed and delayed.
There’s now, once again, renewed talk that the third runway project will go ahead, but even without the final approval signed and sealed, Heathrow is embarking on improvement plans that it has, for too long, kept on pushing back.
For example, the demolition of Terminal 1 and the expansion of Terminal 2 were only meant to start once the third runway became a reality.
The Saudis won’t, however, be paying for all of the investment. Much of the money will still come from the airlines and passengers that use Heathrow in the form of airport charges.
Heathrow charges airlines an average of £33.26 for every single passenger they carry – a fee that is quickly passed onto customers.
Airlines claim these charges make Heathrow the most expensive airport in the world to operate out of, although the airport argues that the charges have actually dropped 23% in the past decade.
Matt’s Take
Any investment to improve the passenger experience at Heathrow should be welcomed, given that the airport can be such a nightmare to use, whether you live and work in London or are trying to transit through it.
At the same time, any investment will likely come with calls from Heathrow to increase its already astronomical passenger charge. At the very least, though, we should be thankful that Heathrow is planning this investment without any concrete assurance that the third runway will go ahead.
The problem with for-profit airports, just like other entities that should be publicly run, is that the primary motivation is earning that profit rather than attending to the effective functioning of the place.
I was at Terminal 5 yesterday for a BA flight to Boston. Not only was the BA flight cancelled, but we spent 4 hours waiting for our bags to be told they’re lost….
The same thing happened yesterday (20 July 2025) at Terminal 2.
After the same thing happened 20 July 2025 at Heathrow Terminal 2, bags remains stuck at Heathrow T2 four days and counting. They must have relocated some bags away from the front entrance and placed them on the tarmac (will they be waterlogged after being out in the elements?), presumably to avoid more embarrassing social media photos. AirTag trackers show many many bags still piled up at T2. FOUR DAYs and counting.