Express & Star Midlands Life: West Midlands features, people and places

Express & Star Midlands Life: West Midlands features, people and places: "Gridlock at internet check-in desks
Aug 10, 2006
While it is undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of modern communication, the web's major flaw was demonstrated again today following the announcement of increased security measures at UK airports after an alleged terror threat.

Fundamentally, it's not that different to an airline check-in desk.

The queue can only accomodate so many people and if there's a huge throng coming from all angles and milling around, individual requests for service take time and, eventually, someone's going to pull down the shutters. It was a bit like that on the British Airport Authority's websites this morning.

The main site www.baa.co.uk seemed a little slow to access, but the key site, www.heathrow

airport. com ground to a halt.

The BAA runs seven UK airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead and Glasgow. Contacting any of the major ones via the web this morning for information on the nature of the terror threat and advice on what to do about it was pretty much a waste of time.

There was no notice of the threat off the home page of the BAA, even, which may be because the design for that particular page is fixed and not flexible enough for a fast news update. Others, however, had managed to offer more or less information on their websites.

At Birmingham, www.bhx.co.uk the major part of the home page remained unchanged, except for a "Heightened security measures" headline under the news section.

From there you could link through to another page which said: "Passengers travelling through Birmingham International Airport should be aware of heightened security measures across the UK that are in place. Please click on 'Read the Press Release' to the right of this page." Technically, that would comply with the web design gurus' "three-click rule" which aims to get you to any particular piece of information within three clicks.

Once you get there, mind, the tone of the press release is calm and measured and the information appears to be all there as it relates to passengers' travel experience.

It was a similar process for Coventry Airport at www.coventryairport.co.uk, which has a link directly off the front page and a relatively brief explanation on click-through.

But there was a completely different approach from Nottingham East Midlands, which opted for much more direct action.

The site immediately redirects to www.nottinghamema.com/security-announcement.html with a more comprehensive rundown of the security measures in place, advice to passengers and some useful telephone numbers.

I was able to check all three, by the way before I received a message that my connection to www.heathrow

aiport.com had been reset.

Passengers looking for information from our closest airports in the north west would have been disappointed.

There was not a dicky bird at the front desk of https://www.manchesterairport.co.uk, nor on their passenger and visitor information page. In the end, I gave up looking.

Nothing, either, at Liverpool John Lennon at http://www.liverpooljohnlennonairport.com, although there was a pop-up survey asking where you would like to fly to.

The answer is probably: "Anywhere, but not today."

The full text of the Home Secretary's statement on the terror alert can be read at http://www.homeoffice. gov.uk/about-us/news/373144.

Part of it says that "at 2am this morning the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre raised the UK threat state to its highest level - 'CRITICAL'."

Interesting that the threat was upped at 2am once arrests had been made. Also that there are reports that news of the change in threat didn't make the official government websites until closer to 6am.