News: BAA questioned over poor airport standards

Flights > News > # 1599 (29/11/2007)

BAA has faced tough questioning from MPs and airline bosses over its management of Britain’s biggest airports.
The Transport Select Committee hearing into the future of BAA grilled the airport operator’s chairman Sir Nigel Rudd and chief executive Stephen Nelson over security queues, dirty airports and the group's capability to invest in improved infrastructure.
BAA owns seven UK airports including the London monopoly of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.
Evidence was given by three leading airlines - American Airlines (AA), British Airways and Easyjet. Don Langford, AA's managing director for Europe and India, contrasted BAA's tardy reaction to the new security arrangements imposed after last year's terror plot to that of rival Manchester Airport.
He said: "In the last two years BAA has been less responsive over operational issues. Access to senior management has deteriorated."
Mr Nelson argued that BAA's new owner, a consortium controlled by Spanish construction group Ferrovial, had spent an extra £30m to cut security queues and improve cleanliness, while next year's opening of Heathrow's Terminal 5 would ease congestion.
Toby Nicol, Easyjet's communications director, called for a review of BAA's regulation by the Civil Aviation Authority, arguing a formula founded on a regulated asset base rewarded poorly targeted spending.
"BAA makes a profit margin that would make Tutankhamun blush," Mr Nicol said. "It's allowed to spend and spend and spend and we are the ones who are left to pick up the bill."
Why else, he said, would BAA be considering handling A380 super-jumbos on a proposed new runway at Stansted when no airline planned to fly them there. "Why are we, the users now, expected to pay for that?"
Paul Ellis, BA's general manager of infrastructure policy, called for the regulator to impose licensing conditions on BAA. "There's clearly not enough teeth in the regulatory process at the moment," he said.