Heathrow Olympics Terminal & BA's "Flying Britain Home" Seats Offer Campaign

Whilst Eurozone air passenger traffic has affected* the number of overall passengers using Heathrow in the run-up to the Olympics, the airport still dealt with 5.8 millions passengers in May* according to the airport operator BAA.  The operator is not responsible for immigration controls which caused huge delays of 3 to 4 hours recently.  However, to help reduce pressure on immigration and passage during the Gamesfor passengers using Terminals One, Three, Four and Five and to help maintain normal  levels of service, Heathrow has opened a temporary "Olympics Terminal" specially for Olympic teams and officials.  The dedicated terminal will remain open for three days after the Olympics closing ceremony which takes place on 12 August. It will have 31 check-in desks and seven security lanes to handle more than 10,000 athletes and 37,000 bags.   It is expected that August 13th will see the highest daily traffic of the year as Olympic visitors and participants start for home.

In a patriotic gesture BA has run a campaign until today on facebook.com/britishairways which offerered: To give the home nation a boost,  by launching the British Airways ‘Flying Britain Home’ campaign, offering a quarter of a million pounds worth of flights to Brits that live abroad to fly back for the Games. A further 50 flights have been offered to Team GB and Paralympics GB athletes to bring their friends and family home for an extra boost during the Games. 

BA's  Press Office confirms thay have "Received thousands of entries and are really pleased with the campaign."  They are processing the entries asap to be able to advise the lucky entrants in good time for the start of the games.

*  For Dan Milmo, the Guardian's Industrial Editor's article about the drop in Greek, Spain and Italy passengers please see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/12/heathrow-traffic-eurozone-crisis