Baggage Blunders

Summary of case:

Terminal 5 (T5), built by British Airways for $8.6 billion, is London Heathrow Airports newest
state-of-the art facility. Made of glass, concrete, and steel, its the largest free-standing building
in the United Kingdom and has over 10 miles of belts for moving luggage. After two decades in
planning and 100 million hours in manpower, opening day didnt work out as planned. Endless
lines and major baggage handling delays led to numerous flight cancellations stranding many
irate passengers. Airport operators said the problems were triggered by glitches in the terminals
high-tech baggage-handling system. With its massive automation features, T5 was planned to
ease congestion at Heathrow and improve the flying experience for the 30 million passengers
expected to pass through it annually. With 96 self-service check-in kiosks, over 90 fast check-in
bag drops, 54 standard check-in desks, and over 10 miles in suitcase moving belts that were
supposed to be able to process 12,000 bags per hour, the facilitys design seemed to support
those goals.

Problems :

The chaos of Terminal 5's first day

Thousands of passengers had their travel plans disrupted and British Airways was forced
to cancel at least 34 flights in and out of the terminal.
Moving luggage belt not functioning
Few broken escalators and hand dryers

Reasons:
Glitches in the terminal's high tech baggage handling system
Understaffed
Major Management Problem and no contingency plan

Result:

Significant financial losses

Lost bags
Canceled flights
National humiliation and unsatisfied passengers

Attaullah Hazrat
Question1:
What type of control feedforward, Concurrent, or Feedback- do you think would be most
important in this situation? Explain your choice.

Answer1:
Control is the management function involving the process of monitoring activities to ensure that
they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations.
An effective control system ensures that activities are completed in ways that lead to the
attainment of the organizations goals.
The effectiveness of a control system is determined by how well it facilitates goal
achievement.

The Feedforward control:

Feedforward control would be the most effective type of control in this case. Knowing that this
control takes place before the actual activity,it allows to detect and prevent possible issues.Since
the first day for the T5 was very important for its reputation ,and that solving problems as they
occur in an airport can take too much time and therefore cause frustration for passengers.

The Feedback Control:

is one of the most used type of controlling that take place after the evaluating activity and the
damages that have occurred.There is two type of feedback's advantages. First feedback provide
managers with information on how effective their planning efforts were and if their performance
have been meet with the plan.The second feedback is one that provide details on how well
employers have done their jobs.

The Concurrent Control:

is a controlling tool that comes within the process of a work activity. Which mean a supervision
take place during the processing work, and if problems occur the manager use the concurrent
control, that is a direct correction after the detection of the problem. Also, the concurrent control
is called direct supervision or "management by walking around". Thus, as it's name implies it's
saying that the controller or the manager should be walking around the workplace as a monitor to
detect problems and correct them on time.

Attaullah Hazrat
Question2:
How might immediate corrective action have been used in this situation? How about basic
corrective action?

Answer2:Actually there is used two types of Managerial action in this case which is given
below:
Correct Actual Performance:
which is about the "immediate corrective action", that is a procedure to corrects problems at once
to get performance get back on track. And also about "the basic corrective action" which looks at
how and why performance deviated before correcting the source of deviation.

Immediate Corrective Action used in the case:

"Our teams have now restored all check-in services and we have additional staff in the terminal
to help passengers."
This was the way they used to get rid of the problem based on an airport spokesperson comment.

The Basic Corrective Action used in the case:

The basic corrective action: They should have changed all the planning of the coming flights or
changed the way they manage the flight, check-in, and the luggage.

Question3:
Could British Airwayss controls have been more effective? How?
Answer3:
Effectiveness of the British Airways' controls
British Airways could have been more effective by preparing themselves beforehand.
They should have formed their staff in other airports so they could be more prepared.
They also should have invited the IT of the machines to make sure theyll present a good service
to their first costumers and solve problems immediately .
Question4:
What role would information controls play in this situation? Customer interaction controls?

Banchmarking?

Answer4:
-Inforamtion controls could provide the managers with accurate information about the problems
that the passengers face and have a clear idea about the occuring events and deviations in the
Terminal.
-Customer interaction is crucial in this case because the satisfaction of the passengers with the
quality of the sevices provided is the best indicator for the managers to estimate the effectiveness
of the organization and to improve the actual performance.

Attaullah Hazrat
-Benchmarking which is searching the best practices among competitors or non competitors
could have helped the managers to choose better equipment and prevent problems such as
understaffing or lack of communication.

Conclusion:
Even though the unveiling day of the airport facility was disastrous and many loses occurred,
those working in terminal 5 knew how to shift the outcome to achieve standard satisfaction of
passengers.

References :
www.britishaiways.com
Management book
https://prezi.com/ihjgtwu-3tkm/foundations-of-control/
http://www.slideshare.net/hunjoo14/robbins-mgmt11-im18

Attaullah Hazrat