London Heathrow Airport was the busiest international airport in the world when British Airways (BA), the flagship airline of the UK, promoted their new Terminal 5. The CEO decided that all BA activity in other terminals would cease and overnight, everything would transfer to the new terminal for opening the next day. Terminal 5 was described as one of the most technologically advanced airport terminals in the world.

During the first five days, BA misplaced more than 23,000 bags, cancelled 500 flights and made millions in losses. BA later revealed that staff had not been trained properly, loading staff were unable to sign on to the baggage-reconciliation system. Problems with the wireless Lan meant that staff could not enter information on bags into the system which also could not receive information about bags transferring from other airlines. Eventually the reconciliation system failed completely, so bags missed their already delayed flights. Towards the end of the first day BA told passengers they would be leaving without their luggage and that anyone who had not yet checked in could choose between travelling without baggage or re-booking their flight.

This is now a textbook example of how not to develop and implement new systems.

Select a large-scale system implementation and explain the following information in your response:

What type of a large-scale system was implemented and why?

What issues occurred when this system was implemented?

• What could have been done to prevent these issues from occurring?