02 October 2008

Bad Airport, Naughty Airport - go to your kennel!

Martin Broughton is BA's Chairman - also head of the CBI and various other entities, was waxing lyrically yesterday to e-tid on the launch of T5. Broughton says T5 fiasco lost BA passengers
and he "was ‘mortified’ at the debacle following the opening of Heathrow Terminal 5."

‘There is no question we lost passengers as a result. However, we have now had 9m passengers travelling through T5, and the vast majority have seen that it is a dramatically better terminal.’

I am not sure he ever really experienced the joys of the former deadbeat terminals 1,2, and 4 that BA occupied. T4 was a complete joke. T1 has wonderful moments on YouTube showing the awful state of the processing of people through the security and immigration lines.

But for now BA's chairman can chide the BAA since they have now become everyone's favorite whipping boy.

The interesting battle to follow pits David Cameron's "New" Conservatives against the Tories' long time backer BA. I can well remember the moment when Maggie Thatcher draped her scarf over Robert Ayeling's "theme" tails at the Tory Conference in Blackpool. The new battle is less prosaic than about the airline livery but about what to do with LHR. And I am firmly in the camp of developing a new airport rather than continuing to shoe horn traffic into LHR. While The Thames Estuary is a nice place and would make the best choice - we should make sure that they reconsider Gatwick.

Cheers

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