By Jonathan Collins

In the United Kingdom, one story recently dominated all others. And it's no wonder. It had all the elements of good U.K. newspaper drama: corporate hubris and personal misery, combined with the smoldering sentiments that shiny new things don't work and the British are becoming increasingly inept.

The opening of Terminal 5 (T5) at London Heathrow Airport was always going to be a big news story. Five years in the making, it was the new home for all British Airways flights in and out of Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports. After it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth a few days before the first passengers arrived, the story turned dark and grim, marred by more than 200 canceled flights during the first four days of operation, thousands of stranded passengers and 20,000-plus items of undelivered baggage.


Much of the problem centered on technical and staffing issues with the new—and inefficient—baggage system. The British Airports Authority (BAA), which operates and manages the baggage systems at all Heathrow terminals, decided to use bar-code technology to manage baggage at T5. Among its reasons for not deploying RFID baggage tagging was that to date, "RFID is still only used by a handful of airports around the world, [and] the real benefits of the technology only come into play when RFID is being used by a network of airports and airlines. Currently, no such global network exists."