Three weeks after American Airlines has completed it’s move to London Heathrow’s Terminal 5 more oneWorld carriers will follow suit with Japan Airlines as well as Qatar Airways shifting over to T5.
JAL and Qatar will complete their move next week between Monday and Wednesday and there’s also speculation that Finnair will follow at a later point.
Both carriers were temporarily relocated to Terminal 2 due to the closure of T3 / T4 which wasn’t a positive development especially for Qatar Airways as they had to leave their lounge behind.
The closure of Heathrow’s terminals following a breakdown in air traffic and the subsequent shuffle of airlines throughout the terminals caused the oneWorld carriers to re-evaluate their locations and consider moving closer together.
Early July I wrote about American Airlines moving over to T5 under the same roof with British Airways, an event that ended up causing some controversy as it was attended by an American Airlines executive flying in from the U.S. who apparently circumvented/skirted the UK quarantine regulations.
At least Heathrow finally gets it’s act together and moves at least some oneWorld carriers under the same roof. Hopefully Finnair will follow as anticipated by early/mid August.
It’ll be interesting to see if Qatar Airways finds a way to move it’s Premium Lounge over to Terminal 5 as well. Until then Qatar and JAL passengers are eligible to use the British Airways lounges.
All other oneWorld carriers however which include Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, Royal Air Maroc and SriLankan Airlines will remain at their location in Terminal 2, at last until Heathrow re-opens their other terminals for which there isn’t a schedule right now. In any case I’m not sure there is anough space in Terminal 5 to handle all of them even if they wanted to.
On a separate note, British Airways has moved flights back to Gatwick however.
For exact departure information I suggest to follow the London Heathrow departure board to make sure you approach the right terminal.
Conclusion
If you’ve ever transferred flights between any oneWorld airline and BA at London Heathrow Airport it might have annoyed you that you had to change terminals to/from Terminal 3 in order to catch your connection. At least this will now change for some carriers involved in this shuffle.
As I said before London Heathrow has always been a mess and the way airlines were scattered over the entire airport never made a lot of practical sense as it’s often the case with old airports that were never designed to grow as big as they eventually became. This excess of terminal space and consolidation has presented the airlines with a dilemma and at least oneWorld is now trying to make the best out of it.
