As Heathrow waits to see if it can grow once more, a chapter in its past expansion comes to an end.
Terminal 1, built in 1968 to accommodate the boom in air travel and once the biggest airport terminal in Europe, closes its doors on Monday evening, 36 hours before the Airports Commission reveals whether Heathrow will get its backing for a third runway, and a brand new terminal to serve it.
Confusingly, Terminal 1 was not Heathrow’s oldest: an original building was renamed Terminal 2 before demolition, and Terminal 3 arguably predates it (although the building and forecourt has been completely overhauled). But the passing of T1, in airport shorthand, will see the last of the central heritage buildings – or the last vestiges of squat, unloved 1960s concrete, depending on your point of view – disappear from travellers’ lives.
Most airlines have already decamped to newer terminals, and the last survivor, British Airways, will operate the final flight using T1 from London to Hanover on Monday night.
When the Queen opened T1 47 years ago, it was devoted to domestic flights from carriers whose names have long disappeared, some incorporated into the modern BA. By 1975, BA would allow passengers to simply turn up at T1 to board the shuttle service it flew to Glasgow – and pay on the plane. Later, T1 passengers included the wealthy treating themselves to Concorde “champagne specials”, charter flights that simply flew around the Bay of Biscay.
The site of T1 will be subsumed into the glass cathedral of the new T2, opened last year. A Terminal 6 may yet come if the Airports Commission endorses Heathrow over Gatwick this Wednesday, when it finally reports.
The commission, led by Sir Howard Davies, was set up by the prime minister in 2012 to examine the need for additional airport capacity in south-east England. It has shortlisted two proposals at Heathrow: the airport’s own and another plan from the Heathrow Hub group to lengthen an existing runway, as well as Gatwick’s proposal for a second runway. Locals with a long memory remember when permission was sought for T5, the first of the modern glass behemoths, in the 1990s: Heathrow promised that a bigger terminal meant no new runway would be needed. The history of T1 shows that the airport is likely to grow and grow.
• This article was amended on 7 July 2015 to clarify that the first shuttle service from London to Glasgow didn’t start until 1975, not 1968 as an earlier version suggested.
