IT IS a big week for Heathrow Airport. Tomorrow, the Davies Commission, which was set up to recommend the best way to add extra air capacity to London and its environs, reports. London is desperately short of runways, and the choice has come down to adding a third runway at Heathrow, a second one at Gatwick, or perhaps some sort of fudge. Many businesses and, I daresay, business travellers, would like to see the extra runway at Heathrow. Squeezing all those planes at the world’s third-busiest airport on to just two runways—half the number of Tokyo Heneda, the fourth-busiest—stretches passengers’ patience and drives up airlines’ fees horribly. The trouble is that Heathrow is, relatively speaking, close to the city it serves. And the prevailing wind direction means that the normal flight path takes planes right over the city. So expansion at Heathrow would be politically troublesome, not just because it would mean concreting over several nearby villages, but also because the residents of well-to-do neighbourhoods to the west of London (which includes one Mrs E Windsor of Windsor Castle, Berkshire, whose modest pile lies directly underneath one of the flightpaths) would kick up a fuss about the extra noise and pollution. Several members of the cabinet, including Boris Johnson, who is also the Mayor of London, are thus dead-set against building a third runway.

We will look at the decision, whichever way it goes, in more depth later this week, once the recommendations have been published. But with all eyes on the Davies Commission, it was easy to overlook that this week was a momentous one for Heathrow for another reason: the retirement of Terminal 1.

T1 was opened by the aforementioned Mrs Windsor (in her capacity as the Queen) in 1969. It originally served domestic air routes, including, according to the Guardian, a British European Airways shuttle service to Glasgow, for which passengers did not need tickets, but could simply turn up and pay on the plane. Perhaps its most glamorous attraction was Concorde. But T1 was not for those who plied the rock-star route from London to New York. Instead, it was the starting—and finishing—point for “champagne specials”. These were flights that simply flew around the Bay of Biscay to give their wealthy passengers a taste of supersonic travel and, no doubt, something to boast about at the golf club.

For all its history, Terminal 1 will not be missed. It is a cramped, ugly building that has little place at a modern airport; certainly when compared with the shiny and modern Terminal 5 or, indeed, the rejuvenated T2 that is swallowing up T1 as part of an £11 billion ($17.3 billion) upgrade. That upgrade will eventually see the airport’s five terminals reduced to three. Whether the number of terminals will soon match the number of its runways we will find out shortly. Business travellers, bored of those interminable stretches on planes queuing for the runway, or circling London waiting to land, probably hope so.