Heathrow gears up for the big goodbye
Staff at the UK’s biggest airport are dealing with the challenge of getting thousands of Olympic athletes away on their flights home.
The competitors will be among 116,000 people who will depart from Heathrow, making it one of the west London airport’s busiest ever days.
This compares with around 95,000 who would be departing on a normal day and is not far behind the record of 123,000 departing passengers set on 29 July last year.
Around 6,000 athletes were able to check their bags through at the Olympic village in east London last night. They will leave Heathrow on Monday with around 9,000 other Olympics-related passengers.
The athletes will have their own specially-constructed Games terminal, which is the size of three Olympic swimming pools. It has 31 check-in desks and seven security lanes.
Athletes are expected to depart with more than three bags per person, including outsize sporting equipment.
They will arrive by coach and be treated to a special London-themed send-off, the details of which Heathrow operator BAA is keeping a closely-guarded secret.
Guard of honour
No aircraft will depart from the Games terminal. Instead, athletes will take an airside coach to their final departure point where they will mingle with regular passengers as they wait for their flight.
Athletes will be clapped into each terminal by a guard of honour made up of Heathrow volunteers.
After three days of operation, the terminal will be decommissioned and the site returned to its original use as a staff car park.
BAA Chief Executive Colin Matthews said: “Heathrow is proud of the part we have played in making London 2012 a success.
“We hope that Olympic athletes, spectators and officials enjoyed a great welcome to London.
“Olympic departures present a fresh challenge with new facilities like the Games terminal being used for the first time. We have been preparing for seven years to deliver a farewell of which the whole country can be proud.”