Opened in March 2008, Terminal 5 has served as the modern centerpiece of London's Heathrow Airport. Designed by architects from Richard Rogers Partnership, the terminal had a troubled opening - resulting in hundreds of cancelled flights and thousands of lost bags during its first fortnight - but has since become a major part of Heathrow's operations. The terminal, which cost around £4 billion (around €4.8 billion) to design and build, was crowned Best Airport Terminal at this year's World Airport Awards (yes, that's a genuine thing).
However, despite its huge cost and now successful operations, Terminal 5 has been plagued by a rather unusual problem. The building is equipped with 120,000 light fixtures, plus thousands of motion sensors to turn them off and on. Despite this, staff have complained that the 'departures concourse' has been getting progressively darker, especially over the last few months - all because the area's lightbulbs cannot be safely replaced by traditional methods such as gondolas or cherry pickers. With 60% of the lightbulbs said to have failed, this has forced the airport authorities to install contingency lighting for safety reasons.
Now, the management team seem to have come to a long-term solution to the problem: tightrope walkers. According to an email sent by British Airways' Vicki O'Brien to staff at Heathrow and published by Exaro, "Various [methods of changing lightbulbs] have been investigated in the past five years, but for a number of reasons none of these were practical or safe. The good news is that Heathrow has now identified a safe and robust way to replace all the lightbulbs, and this is high-level rope work carried out by a specialist company."
The specialist workers will be assigned from a tightrope walking company, similar to Cirque du Soleil. The balancing artists will replace the existing lightbulbs with LEDs, which are expected to last up to 5 years before needing to be replaced again.
To see a glimpse of Terminal 5 and its troublesome roof and lighting structure, check out the video below:
