Chaos at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 has been “a public relations nightmare” for British Airways, said Jeff Randall in The Daily Telegraph, and it joins a long “list of national embarrassments”.
The disruption will cost BA between £20m and £50m, said The Wall Street Journal – just as it grapples with surging fuel prices and rising competition as routes between the EU and the US have been deregulated under the “Open Skies” agreement.
Terminal 5: who’s to blame?
Many of Terminal 5’s deficiencies, such as faulty baggage systems, lie with the airport operator BAA, said Jeremy Warner in The Independent. But as the terminal was built for BA’s exclusive use, it is equally to blame. The arrangement between them “is not dissimilar to the symbiotic dependence of Network Rail and the train companies”, agreed Randall – if the former fails, so do the latter.
But that doesn’t excuse BA chief Willie Walsh, said Anthony Hilton in the Evening Standard. His organisation “failed to plan for the possibility of disaster… failed to recover from it, and failed to come clean about it”.
Open Skies will be more of a financial headache, however. Customers wishing to punish BA by using a different airline to fly to the US now have more choice and lower prices, said Dan Milmo in The Guardian. The resulting dent to group profits is estimated at £273m.
BAY: 12m change –49%