Heathrow Gridlock

From Yahoo News:
"Heathrow warns strike will cause 'gridlock'"

Passengers arriving at Heathrow may have to wait up to 12 hours for immigration checks as border staff join next week's strike over pensions, an airport official warned on Friday. Normand Boivin, Heathrow's chief operating officer, told the Daily Telegraph that travellers could even be held on aircrafts while huge immigration queues are cleared by a skeleton staff at the country's busiest airport on Wednesday.

"Modelling of the impacts of strike action on passenger flows at Heathrow show that there are likely to be very long delays of up to 12 hours to arriving passengers," Boivin said. "The delays at immigration are likely to be so long that passengers could not be safely accommodated within the terminals and would need to be held on arriving aircraft. "This in turn would quickly create gridlock at the airport with no available aircraft parking stands, mass cancellations or departing aircraft and diversions outside the UK for arriving aircraft," he added. As the airport's operator BAA held talks with the UK Border Agency and airlines in a bid to minimise the impact of the industrial action, reports emerged Thursday that the Home Office is roping in border agency staff who are not union members and civil servants from Whitehall to man immigration desks.

^ This is just plain disgusting. The strikers should be ashamed of themselves. The UK Border Agency is a Federal Department and its employees should not be allowed to strike - especially considering not too long ago the same Department at Heathrow was found to have lax policies. Heathrow Airport is one of the worst airports I have ever been to. It is too big and disorganized at every level. They is chaos from fog and snow storms, the company that is supposed to help the disabled are incompentent and rude. Heathrow should be closed down completely and a huge over-haul needs to be done (even if that means firing most of the people.) Heathrow could then hire new people, train them and reopen the airport. Maybe the threat of pink slips will force the airport employees( from the top-down_ to start doing their jobs correctly and start treating passengers as human-beings.) The fact that they always seem to do these types of things around the holidays just show how arrogant the unions and the strikers are. I would love to see all of them on the dole. Maybe then the airport would run more smoothly. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/heathrow-warns-strike-cause-gridlock-100005069.html