And one thing can be certain - there will be much said and indeed much
to say about it. Already BAA have put the plan to fingerprint all
passengers flying from T5 on hold because of concerns over compliance
with data protection laws, whilst anti-third runway protesters plan on
holding a 'flash mob protest' at T5 at 11am today.

Main BBC News online story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7314816.stm

BBC News - BA pioneer to land first T5 plane
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7313093.stm

BBC News - Heathrow fingerprint plan on hold
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7315415.stm


BAA has produced a fairly comprehensive and reasonably informative
Terminal 5 information pack, which can be read or downloaded via this
link (PDF):

http://www.heathrowairport.com/asset...fo_packnew.pdf


The 'Vital Statistics' pages do contain some useful hard facts, along
with the obligatory comparisons of elements of T5 with pre-existing
'big things' - however, whilst some such comparisons are ridiculed,
the fact that the T5 site is stated to be the equivalent area to Hyde
Park did catch my imagination (though maybe that just merely proves
I'm a bit of a simpleton...).

And anyone who decides that the unit of comparison for the amount of
steel in the roof is to be bull elephants wins my respect! (It's 2,833
bull elephants worth of steel, by the way - and you'd better get used
to it, as this is the unit which Lakshmi Mittal is apparently
considering switching to.)

Lots of other things of note in there. I particularly liked the choice
of the type of tree that was chosen for the area outside the main
entrance to the terminal building - the 40 woody perennials in
question are of course London Plane trees.