Five more years of chaos as heart of Heathrow is turned into building site

Demolition work on Heathrow's two most decrepit passenger facilities - Terminal Two and the Queen's Building - is scheduled to begin next spring as part of the next phase of the airport's modernisation.

They will be replaced by a £1.5billion new terminal called Heathrow East, designed by Norman Foster and capable of handling 30 million passengers a year by 2012.

But unlike Terminal Five, which has been built at the end of the two runways on the western perimeter of the airport, the construction site for Heathrow East will be at the centre of the airport.

There will also be extensive work at Terminal One, which could be turned into a huge baggage handling facility, and Terminal Three.

One senior source at Heathrow's owner BAA said: "It is challenging. There will be construction equipment demolishing Terminal Two in a very busy area. That will take significant management - but there is no other alternative."

Terminal Two and the Queen's Building date back to 1953 when the airport was handling 1.2 million passengers a year - a fraction of the 67 million who use it now.

BAA is in advanced discussions with airlines likely to be worst affected by the modernisation plans.

A spokesman for BMI, the second heaviest user of Heathrow after British Airways, said: "It will cause an element of disruption; we just hope it will be kept to a minimum.

"There are various people at all levels, from the chairman and chief executive downwards, already in meetings with BAA about that." Virgin Atlantic communications director Paul Charles said: "Inevitably any major building project involves creating a lot of dust. It will have to be done with very careful planning to be any sort of success."

Virgin is considering moving from its Terminal Three base to Heathrow East after its completion in 2012.

Plans submitted to Hillingdon council show that about 90 per cent of the concrete deliveries will be via the heavily congested M4 spur-road. The vast majority of lorry movements will be between 7am and 6pm.

However, BAA managers insist that the work is unavoidable. The source said: "We plan to deliver £3.7billion of investment, including Heathrow East, by 2012. But within five years, 60 to 70 per cent of passengers will be going through terminals that have not been built yet."

Spanish-owned BAA, which faced a summer of criticism over its management of Heathrow, believes the opening of Terminal Five exactly six months from tomorrow will mark the turning point.

Terminal Five, which has been built on time and to budget, will be capable of handling 30 million passengers and will be used as the new base for British Airways. Testing of its facilities and security began this week with hundreds of volunteers.

Heathrow East is being billed as Europe's greenest airport terminal. It will generate gas from waste wood and have solar panels to reduce its energy use by 40 per cent.

However, some observers argue that Heathrow's congestion problems will only be solved when a third runway is given the go-ahead - a decision that would be bitterly opposed by residents and environmentalists.