It’s a thought which will properly have occurred to you when you’ve got landed at Heathrow at any level within the final decade. Or, extra seemingly, have been heading to the airport on a Piccadilly or Elizabeth Line prepare – and have discovered your self listening to the station bulletins.
Why does Britain’s largest air hub not have a Terminal 1? Contemplating that Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe – and the fifth busiest on the planet – this does appear a trifle uncommon.
1005 Heathrow terminal map
Additionally it is nothing new. It’s 10 years now since Terminal 1 disappeared from view, waving farewell to its closing departure, a British Airways flight to Hannover, at 9.30pm on June 29 2015. The lights have been turned off later that night, the bulbs dimming with out ceremony.
In fact, whereas it had existed for 47 years previous to its closure – and had worn its coveted quantity virtually from the off – Terminal 1 was solely briefly the star of the Heathrow present.
Heathrow Terminal 1 noticed its closing departure in 2015 – Heathrow Photograph Library
True, it was a part of the grand reinvention of the airport in the course of the Nineteen Sixties – the last decade during which air journey actually started to morph from a high-cost pursuit for the wealthy into an everyday type of journey for on a regular basis holidaymakers. Heathrow had reached the milestone of 1 million passengers per 12 months by as early as 1953, however because the Nineteen Sixties neared their finish, that determine was nearer to 14 million. Growth was important.
Terminal 1 was on the vanguard of this progress. It pushed open its doorways on April 17 1968, however was rapidly shoved down the headlines by extra important occasions – arriving, because it did, on the day that the FBI issued an arrest warrant for the suspected assassin of Martin Luther King, and 24 hours earlier than London Bridge was bought to an American entrepreneur.
The design of Terminal 1 was stark, centered primarily on getting passengers from A to B successfully – Getty
Photographs of the period present it as a blocky, unlovely constructing, redolent of the architectural developments of the time. It had been designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd, the British architect who had been pivotal to the continued development efforts at Heathrow over the earlier decade (whereas additionally engaged on the event of Harlow as a “new city”). Though Gibberd had proven a exceptional flamboyance in crafting Liverpool’s dramatic new Metropolitan Cathedral over the earlier seven years (1960-1967), Terminal 1 was a practical proposition, primarily involved with getting its prospects from A to B with minimal fuss.
Queen Elizabeth II inaugurated Terminal 1 on April 17 1969 – Getty
It had its moments, after all. It was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II on April 17 1969. And with its ribbon snipped, it was the most important short-haul terminal in western Europe, chargeable for the majority of home departures and arrivals, in addition to connections to the continent. As soon as it had come into being in 1974, British Airways used Terminal 1 as a key hub. So did British Midland Worldwide (BMI). At its peak, Terminal 1 harboured 17 airways, greeted 13.8 million passengers a 12 months, and hit an annual whole of 123,000 flights.
And but, regardless of its very particular quantity, it was by no means the primary. Heathrow’s authentic terminal was the Europa Constructing. It appeared as early as 1955 – once more with the Queen ushering it formally into view; once more, as a chunk of Gibberd’s handiwork. But in a curious quirk, when Terminal 1 opened and the Europa Constructing wanted to be rechristened (in Might 1969), it turned “Terminal 2” – although it predated its new sibling by 13 years.
The departure lounge of the then-newly opened Heathrow Terminal 1 – getty
Stranger nonetheless, Terminal 1 was additionally predated by Terminal 3. That construction, too, had emerged from the ether in a non-numbered guise, commencing operations on November 13 1961, because the “Oceanic Terminal”. As its identify recommended, its function was to fulfill the rising demand for long-haul flights. Its numerical rebrand additionally occurred in Might 1969.
For some time, Terminal 1 eclipsed them each. In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, it was the departure level for the constitution flights which noticed British Airways make Concorde accessible to the general public past its premium transatlantic routes – getting down to zoom above France and Spain with its “Journey across the Bay [of Biscay]” packages. And within the early Nineteen Nineties, Terminal 1 loved a big improve with the set up of its new “Europier” – half one million sq. ft of contemporary infrastructure, designed to facilitate the arrival of wide-body plane.
However because the millennium dawned, so the top approached. Terminal 5 had been mentioned as early as 1982, at a degree when Terminal 4 was nonetheless below development on the southern aspect of the airport complicated (it was finally opened by the then-Prince and Princess of Wales, on April 1 1986). Heathrow’s £4.2 billion flagship wouldn’t be prepared for motion till March 2008, however when it clicked into gear, it was a dying knell for 1968’s poster boy.
Immediately, Terminal 1 is used as each a baggage dealing with facility and a coaching centre – Heathrow Photograph Library
Terminal 5 was not a direct alternative for Terminal 1, however its costly creation made it the primary focus of British Airways’ operations. Additional BA flights have been sucked away into Terminal 2, which loved its personal £2.3 billion refurbishment between 2009 and 2014. By the point the curtains have been drawn on Terminal 1 in 2015, solely 4 airways have been nonetheless seen up on its departures boards: BA, Icelandair, El Al and the Brazilian service TAM.
Finally, it was Terminal 2 – that authentic Europa Constructing, which had had its thunder stolen in 1969 – which delivered the coup de grace. Outdated and out of time, Terminal 1’s closure was largely pushed by the modernisation of its neighbour. A decade later, it lives on as an unheralded appendix; a lot of the bags dealing with for Terminal 2 is finished by way of the wall subsequent door. The constructing can be maintained as a coaching centre, with the London Hearth Brigade, the Ambulance Service and the Met Police utilizing it as a venue for drills and emergency checks.
This, a minimum of, ensures that Gibberd’s blocky constructing has a direct future – a ghost by the runway; a bizarre hole on the Piccadilly Line route map.
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