About 250 protesters staged a demonstration at the new Heathrow Terminal Five (T5) to show their opposition to aviation growth.
Staged as a "flash mob" protest, the demonstration involved people stripping off their outer clothes to reveal red T-shirts underneath.
The bright red shirts were emblazoned with the slogan "Stop Airport Expansion".
Watched over by many police officers - some of them armed - the protesters staged their demonstration in the arrivals hall at the new £4.3 billion terminal.
John Stewart, chairman of Heathrow anti-expansion residents' group, Hacan (Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise) said: "We recognise there are problems for passengers in the existing Heathrow terminals and many of our members use Heathrow.
"This is not a demonstration against T5 so much as against what T5 means and that is extra flights, as many as 80,000 a year at Heathrow."
advertisement
Made up of residents' groups and environmental groups, the demonstrators are concerned that a third, short runway and a sixth terminal will be created at Heathrow.
Meanwhile, the new Terminal 5 opened to a mixed reaction from passengers. A sophisticated luggage system was supposed to be able to handle 12,000 bags an hour, dramatically improving the luggage performance of airport operator BAA and British Airways.
But after bags came through very quickly following the arrival of the first flight into the new terminal from Hong Kong, within four hours some passengers were having to wait up to 75 minutes to collect their luggage.
Passengers arriving in the sparkling new building complained of being given no information about the bags, apart from being told there were either technical difficulties or a technical defect.
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
Print
Email this
Comment
