I flew home from London to San Francisco from Heathrow's new Terminal 5, inhabited solely by British Airways. I flew on March 27, the day it opened. As the world now knows, this was a day of epic British humiliation. For weeks the British newspapers and television channels had been vaunting the marvels of T5: miles of baggage conveyors rushing luggage swiftly from check-in point through entrails of steel to airplane hold, the gospel of efficiency bodied forth in this new temple of modernism.< ...

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