15 June 2007

Still standing

Heathrow's glittering new terminal five is due to open at the end of next march. The airport's operator BAA expects that 30 million passengers a year will pass through Richard Rogers's "Cathedral to Flight". To handle this volume the terminal will contain a generous 700 seats; unless of course you want to pay for inflated prices for a beer or coffee in which case they will throw in a seat for free. By my reckoning this means that each passenger will be entitled to a seat for a little over 12 minutes out of their 3 hour wait.

There will however be 23,000 square metres of shops in which to spend your time. In the words of Mark Riches, MD of World Duty Free: "If we can't sell to people who can't leave the building, then there's something wrong with us."

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