Fascinating Facts

• T5 was approved by the Secretary of State on 20 November 2001 after the longest public inquiry in British history (46 months). The inquiry heard 700 witnesses give 30million words of evidence recorded on 80,000 pages of transcript
• The T5 site is 260 hectares - the equivalent size of Hyde Park in London. This is just under one quarter of the 1,200 hectares occupied by Heathrow
• Terminal 5 and its associated facilities is funded by BAA, not the taxpayer
• The terminal building is almost 400m (a quarter of a mile) long – that's the distance from Bond St to Oxford Circus in London or the equivalent of 40 double-decker buses parked end to end
• The terminal building could fit 50 football pitches on its five floors – around ten per floor
• The new 87 metre high control tower will be double the height of the current Heathrow tower and the tallest in the UK
• T5 has the capacity to serve around 30 million passengers a year; taking the number of people Heathrow will serve to around 90 million each year
• T5 is so big it's been broken down into 16 major projects and more than 100 sub-projects. The sub projects range in cost from £30m-£150m
• There will be up to 6,000 staff working on T5 at the project peak (both on and off site). However, over the life of the project around 60,000 will be involved with building T5
• Around 20,000 trees and shrubs will be planted to improve the visual impact of T5 and the surrounding environment
• T5 will have 175 lifts and 131 escalators
• It will take an estimated 37million manhours (people working on and off site) to build T5
• Around 15,000 cubic metres of concrete was poured per week at peak – enough to fill 2000 concrete mixer lorries
• Around 18 kilometres of conveyor belt to move bags around T5 is being installed
• 13.5km of bored tunnels – equivalent to over a third of the underwater section of the channel tunnel
• The construction surveying on T5 is controlled by Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) and is accurate to 25mm
• Total volume of earthworks 6.5Mm3 – enough to fill the new Wembley Stadium one and a half times.