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On Wednesday 30th November, public sector workers in the UK went on a national strike to protest against a proposed change in their pension schemes. These strikers included staff from the UK Border Agency, who work at Border Control at all of the UK Airports. For the week leading up to the strikes, airports created contingency plans to try and reduce the impact on their passengers if the strikes went ahead. The strikes did take place and it would seem that plans put in place by the airports were successful as there was very little flight disruption or delays at Border Control. Some passengers actually claimed they managed to travel through Heathrow Airport security quicker than usual.

Specialists had predicted 12 hour queues at Heathrow Airport Border Control on the day of the strikes, but this did not happen. It was also thought that large queues at Border Control would result in planes having to wait on the runway for hours to avoid overcrowding at border control halls. This would cause disruption to planes departing and general chaos at Heathrow Airport and other major UK Airports.

However, the predicted chaos did not happen and the airports were successful in minimising delays and queuing times. Heathrow Airport managed to reduce disruption as they brought in extra chairs, stocked up on food and drink and trained additional staff.

On top of this some transatlantic flights were cancelled before Wednesday as airlines wanted to avoid disruption to their flights. This meant there were less people travelling through arrivals Border Control. Some airlines also offered passengers the chance to change their flight date so their planes carried less passengers on the day of strikes which reduced the amount of people queuing at Border Control. This may have contributed to minimising the disruption the strikes could have caused.

Overall, Heathrow and the other UK Airports did their best to avoid disruption by having contingency plans in place. These plans were successful and passengers seemed to be happy with their experience at the airport. It just goes to show, prior planning and organisation can result in a positive experience at airports, even in the face of adversity.

Business is booming at Heathrow Airport. The London hub handled 68m passengers in the year leading up to the end of May 2011. The statistics, released by the BAA earlier this month, represent the highest annual traffic figures ever recorded at the Hillingdon airport. The aviation giant says that the “late Easter holidays and the Royal Wedding” were responsible for at least part of the rise, which also boosted the popularity of the three Scottish airports owned by the BAA.

Whether the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be pleased to discover that their ‘special day’ resulted in an exodus from the country is debatable, but the event was nonetheless a boon for the aviation industry. Passenger numbers at Heathrow Airport were up 11.6% over the figures for May 2010. However, the BAA notes that ‘true’ growth for the month is likely to be in the region of just 5.2%, given that last year’s statistics were impacted by the volcanic ash crisis.

BAA chief, Colin Matthews, noted that demand for flights was “particularly strong” on long-haul routes from Heathrow Airport.

May 2011 was the third consecutive month of growth at Heathrow, following on from bourgeoning traffic in March and April. Edinburgh Airport enjoyed a similar run of good luck, posting buoyant figures for March, April, and May, and increasing monthly passenger numbers by 13.7% over May 2010. Aberdeen and Glasgow airports saw traffic levels for the fifth month increase by 11.8% and 7.0%, respectively.

The other two airports on the BAA’s spreadsheet, Stansted and Southampton, were not as fortunate. While Stansted enjoyed its first month of consecutive growth in more than three years, the Essex hub lost 4.0% of its passengers between May 2010 and the same month this year. Southampton was equally unlucky, despite a PR campaign to lure passengers to the hub from London, posting a loss of 1.1% for the month of May, and a 7.7% reduction in flyers for the year as a whole.

No. 1 Traveller are set to open a ground breaking new lounge in terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport. The lounge will differ from other lounges as it will include bedrooms for private hire and a travel spa. Anyone will be able to book entrance to the lounge as long as they are departing from Terminal 3 of the airport.

The fantastic lounge is set to open in August 2011. The Founder and CEO of No. 1 Traveller made the following statement:

“We are adding a whole new dimension to the experience at Terminal 3, for every passenger. With a new world-class lounge, designer bedrooms, shower facilities and invigorating spa treatments, the passenger’s time at the airport can now be another highlight of their journey. We’re delighted to have created this new level of innovation in association with Heathrow Airport.”

The lounge welcomes children and even includes a tree house, mini-cinema, games room, family room and aquarium to entertain the children.

The spa located inside the lounge has been designed by Spa Directory of The Sanctuary; Debi Green and offers therapies such as manicures, pedicures, massages, facials and hairdressing. The spa also includes luxury shower suites for passengers to freshen up.

The bedrooms offer a quiet retreat with a bed and en-suite. Passengers can book the bedrooms for 2 or more hours from only £20.

The new lounge will pave the way for the future of airport lounges and make the departure experience much more enjoyable. The lounge is set to open on the 14th August and you can already make bookings for their spa and bedrooms by visiting their www.no1traveller.com.

Last month was the busiest April on record for Heathrow Airport, according to the British Airports Authority (BAA). The London hub saw passenger numbers soar by 31.5% over April 2010, after a succession of bank holidays and royal nuptials had people racing to their travel agent.

The development is the second in a series of record-breaking events at Heathrow Airport. The hub boosted the punctuality of departures and arrivals to 94% on March 22 2011, a huge improvement over the figures for 2008, when 35.5% of all Heathrow's European flights were delayed.

Colin Matthews, chief at the BAA, said that £1bn of investments were responsible for the hub’s bourgeoning popularity. The executive has also commended the efforts of the “77,000 staff from 320 companies” who work at the airport.

April’s clement weather, which now seems remarkable, given the chilly start to May, was a boon for several other airports in the UK, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Liverpool. Robin Tudor, boss at Liverpool John Lennon, said that the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in April 2010 forced 100,000 people to abandon their holiday plans. However, more than double that figure turned up at the airport during the same month this year.

Iceland’s geological tantrums look set to become an annual feature, after the country’s Meteorological Office revealed that Grimsvotn, a volcano, had begun erupting. The event mirrors the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull for timing, but experts are not anticipating a second ‘volcanic ash crisis’ in the skies above Western Europe. “(The ash) is not spreading nearly as much”, explained Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, of the University of Iceland. “The winds are not as strong as they were in Eyjafjallajokull". However, meteorologists have made no promises beyond the next 24 hours.

Heathrow Airport was visited by 5.8m people during April 2010. The figure represents more than half of the 9.1m handled by the six BAA airports combined. Passenger numbers at neighbouring hub, Stansted, were also up, by 26.2%.

Heathrow, widely known as one of the busiest airports in the world, is also one of the least popular with travellers, according to a report produced by the Airports Council International (ACI). The document, which was leaked to a number of newspapers, revealed that the London hub is not as attractive to passengers as Calcutta Airport in India, Moscow Airport in Russia, and Amsterdam Schiphol in Holland.

The ACI’s poll is an annual event, but the results are usually kept private. The only people who are allowed to see the report are involved with the airports themselves, such as the leaders of the British Airports Authority (BAA). ACI spokeswoman, Nancy Gautier, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the survey is paid for by the 146 airports featured in the rankings. The data is used to gauge levels of customer satisfaction.

Heathrow’s miserable performance can be attributed to its poor “ambience”, which likely refers to the overall quality of the environment inside the hub, and the long queues at security checkpoints. Frequent closures in December and ongoing capacity problems at the airport have also had a detrimental effect on Heathrow’s popularity.

In response to the ACI poll, BAA representative, Andrew Teacher, claimed that two-thirds of travellers are in fact, delighted with the London hub. “The facts show Heathrow as the second-best airport in Europe.” Mr. Teacher’s comments are at odds with previous airport surveys, which saw Heathrow voted the worst hub for delays in 2007, the worst for shopping in 2010, and the rather more ignominious title, worst airport on earth, in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Coming in at 99th in the ACI’s poll of world airports seems like an achievement in comparison.

The BAA can at least take solace in knowing that Heathrow is more popular than Frankfurt Airport in Germany (126th place), Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France (137th), and Melbourne Airport in Australia (104th). The BAA’s other hub in London, Stansted, took 111th place, behind Gatwick in 106th position. At the other end of the scale, Singapore Changi, which won 25 awards in 2010 alone, is the world’s favourite airport, closely followed by Seoul Incheon Airport in South Korea, and Hong Kong International in China.

Air Passenger Duty (APD), a controversial tax that can add hundreds of pounds to the cost of a long-haul flight, will not be increased again until April 2012 at the earliest.

However, the announcement, made by the Chancellor, George Osborne, is unlikely to prompt many celebrations – APD remains severe, and future rises in the flight levy are expected to be very high. The much-publicised freeze is therefore, anything but a genuine attempt to reduce the cost of Britain’s flight taxes, widely recognised as among the highest in the world.

Reaction to the freeze has been apathetic. Simon Buck, of the British Air Transport Association, referred to the development as “the least that the Chancellor could have done". Mr. Buck said that the alternative (increasing APD) would have been “entirely wrong and counter-productive". Unfortunately for travellers, the government wants to earn an extra £1.5bn from APD within the next four years, meaning that the duty must increase significantly from next year.

APD is very unpopular. Manchester Airport recently complained to the government about the deleterious effect of the tax on jobs. The hub’s owner, Manchester Airports Group, remains concerned that any further rise in flight duty could force major airlines to abandon the regional airport for others on the continent.

Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, has levelled a number of colourful rants at the tax, while several European countries, such as Holland, have slashed the cost of APD, or removed their version of the levy altogether. Yet, despite this almost universal recognition of the damage caused by APD, the UK’s rates have increased by 325% since 2005.

Major travel authority, ABTA, has previously asked the government to consider a ‘per plane’ tax as an alternative to APD. However, George Osborne rubbished the plan in March, believing it to be illegal. ABTA claims that per plane duties would take account of a plane’s efficiency, rather than throwing all aircraft into rigid ‘tax bands’, based on distance travelled.

The recent Budget also introduced a new levy on private jets, in an attempt to bolster the UK economy. The move has been criticised by entrepreneur and Labour peer, Lord Sugar, who called it a “window-dressing publicity stunt". Lord Sugar intimated that the amount of money raised by the jet tax would be insufficient to influence the economy at even a local level.

The Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond, has said that airlines based at Heathrow Airport must cooperate with the British Airports Authority (BAA) during periods of heavy snowfall. The MP claimed that several airlines – which have not been named – attempted to ‘force’ their aircraft into vacant takeoff slots, causing confusion for passengers, and headaches for airport workers.

In future, says Mr. Hammond, airlines must adhere to emergency 'snow timetables' during bad weather, in a bid to avoid the “unacceptable spectacle” of holidaymakers arriving for flights that have either been cancelled or delayed. The move will effectively allow the BAA to ‘shepherd’ 95 world airlines, including Heathrow’s largest carrier, British Airways (BA).

According to the London Evening Standard, BA terminated all flights from the London hub on December 18 2010, after snowfall brought the country to a chilly standstill. However, the announcement was made against the wishes of the BAA, which felt that Heathrow would be able to remain open, despite rapidly worsening weather conditions. The suspension of the flag-carrier’s flights stranded hundreds of passengers in Terminal 5, but Philip Hammond and BA’s bitter rival, Virgin Atlantic, have since directed blame at the BAA for the chaos that befell Heathrow at the end of last year.

Mr. Hammond said that the snow timetable plan has been “signed off” by airlines. The claim seems to go against earlier opinions of the scheme, which was originally proposed by Heathrow’s chief executive, Colin Matthews. The Telegraph quoted an ‘insider’ saying, “What planet is Colin Matthews on?” The anonymous source noted that the plan would only work for a handful of major carriers. Similarly, the Board of Airline Representatives in the UK said that the ability to force emergency timetables should “not be considered as an alternative to an effective snow plan”.

December’s weather was arguably the most disruptive of recent years, and rivalled the volcanic ash crisis of early 2010 for causing chaos in the aviation industry. Experts claim that delayed flights, cancelled trains, and icy roads cost Britain £280m per day.

Earlier this week, the chief executive of the British Airports Authority (BAA), Colin Matthews, told the House of Commons that “too much snow” was the reason for a spate of closures at Heathrow Airport during December 2010. Mr. Matthews, who is also the current head of the London airport, then apologised for the “thousands of Christmas holidays” that were disrupted by delays and cancellations.

Whilst the conclusion may seem obvious, the volume of snow that fell at the end of last year was greater than officials at Heathrow Airport had expected or prepared for, rendering the hub’s contingency plans useless. However, representatives of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, who were also invited to the recent hearing, said that the BAA exacerbated the problem by failing to communicate effectively with Heathrow’s resident airlines.

The international hub was forced to cancel 1,280 flights on Sunday December 19, forcing some passengers to sleep on the terminal floor. Mr. Matthews claimed that persistent snowfall had “totally overwhelmed” Heathrow Airport. Neighbouring hub, Gatwick, was similarly affected, but managed to resist the frequent closures that plagued its larger rival.

Mr. Matthews refused to take his annual bonus as recompense for the chaos, but a recent pay rise, equating to an extra £151,000 per year, will surely heal the cracks in the chief executive’s piggy bank. The wage boost, which came just a few days after Mr. Matthews delivered his apology to the House of Commons, is made up of pension payments, according to the BAA.

The BAA lost around £24m due to festive blizzards, with all but £4m of the figure lost at Heathrow Airport. The BAA has pledged to “do better in future”, but the promise is likely a result of a government proposal to fine or otherwise punish airport owners for failing to prevent disruption to travellers.

British Airways’ (BA) cabin crew will employ “guerrilla tactics” in their long-running battle against their overlords, according to the Telegraph. Whilst the term invokes images of disguised partisans ambushing enemy convoys, BA’s disgruntled employees will not be donning their balaclavas. Instead, the 10,000 members of the British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA) will wage a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign on the airline’s chief executive, Willie Walsh.

The largest branch of workers union, Unite, BASSA, seems to have realised that conventional work stoppages, pickets, and media circuses are insufficient to sway Willie Walsh from his cause: namely, refusing to reinstate full travel perks to striking employees. The flag-carrying airline survived 22 days of strike action last year, as part of one of the longest industrial disputes in recent history. The airline lost £150m, but BASSA’s inability to break down BA’s defences resulted in an arguably worse fate for the union: 2,560 people quit BASSA between mid-2009 and the end of 2010, as confidence in the branch collapsed.

In what could be a last stand for BASSA members, the union is now proposing a different approach to industrial action. Walkouts will be voted for, and announced, as normal, but the order to strike will be withdrawn “at the last minute”. The ensuing confusion could throw airports served by BA into chaos, as the carrier will be forced to contend with two groups of people (strikers and volunteers) reporting for work – and be legally obliged to pay them both for the trouble.

BASSA has also suggested that members work to rule, a move that could result in the end of ‘goodwill activities’, such as helping a passenger with their luggage. Whilst merely spiteful on the surface, Michael Ryley of law firm, Pinsent Masons, notes that goodwill is an integral part of customer-employee relations, and refusing to cooperate goes “beyond” working to rule. “It is a dangerous line to take,” Mr Ryley told the Telegraph.

Commenting on BASSA’s plans, a BA spokesperson was unfazed, saying “We are confident that our contingency plans will allow us to operate normal timetables at Gatwick and London City.” At Heathrow, BA expects its long-haul flights to be unaffected. However, some short-haul flights could be subject to delays.

The snowy conditions and extended closures of many of Britain's busiest airports over the hectic festive period have grabbed the headlines over the past couple of weeks, meaning that one particularly disturbing story relating to the aviation industry has been pushed into the shadows slightly. However, with terrorism and security fears never far from the forefront of airline bosses' and tourists' minds, it seems likely that reports of this sort are set to be the standard as 2011 gets underway.

The latest security alert revolved around the use of terror scouts in the UK, with individuals apparently sent to airports across the nation with instructions to test the level of airport security. Counter-terrorism officials have warned that regional airports may have become the targets for dummy bomb runs, with some airports reporting suspect packages passing through their scanners that seem to have similar profiles to those of improvised explosive devices.

Although nobody has been charged for possessing these suspect packages, since they were examined by bomb disposal experts and found to be harmless, fears are increasing around Whitehall that security levels at major regional air hubs around the country are being assessed by terror scouts in order to identify points of weakness that can be exploited as part of widespread terror plots.

BAA has previously reacted to such threats by urging the government to make security procedures at airports more unpredictable so that terror scouts can't report back specific, reliable information, whilst the airport owner is also thought to be considering the introduction of a widespread system designed to train staff to identify suspicious passengers passing through security.

In the UK, the past two winters have caused chaos at airports, on motorways, and just about everywhere else, as heavy snows and freezing temperatures descended on the country in December, January, and February. This year, despite the lessons of previous winters, Britain is still strangely unable to cope with snow and ice.

The exception to the rule is perhaps London’s first airport, Heathrow. The hub recently spent £500,000 on ‘winter-proofing’ the runway. The shopping spree, which included the purchase of snowploughs and de-icing machines, is a response to snow-related closures in the winter of 2008.

Heathrow now has 69 vehicles on its Snow Team, with 500,000 litres of de-icing fluid at their disposal. The team appears to be an enhanced maintenance crew, enjoying mundane duties, such as cleaning debris from the runway, as well as specialist winter tasks, like scrubbing snow from the apron.

David Whittington, chief of airside operations at the London airport, noted that runways are always cleared first, followed by taxiways. “We’ve got up to 200 aircraft coming toward Heathrow at any one time, so we have to make sure that we have a platform for them to land on."

Aircraft are also employed to clear snow from the runway. The engines of departing planes produce a great deal of heat, which can melt icy patches in seconds. However, planes will not normally be allowed to take off if weather conditions present a serious threat to life and wing, ensuring that this tactic can only be used in minor flurries.

Heathrow claims to be the only UK hub not to experience closures in winter 2009, and the airport is still performing admirably against Mother Nature, surviving the recent snowstorm without closing its doors. However, with 3 months of winter still waiting on the other side of the calendar, the Snow Team is likely to have its mettle tested on more than one occasion before the daffodils reappear in the spring.

Disembarking your flight to discover that your suitcase has been sent to an airport in Moldova is arguably the worst thing that can happen to an air traveller, unless you were at Heathrow Airport on November 7.

Hundreds of suitcases and rucksacks were destroyed at the hub’s Terminal 1, after a sewage pipe burst. “It was a nightmare,” one witness said. “Gallons of raw sewage came spewing out. The stench was appalling.”

The incident is one of many luggage ‘mishaps’ to have occurred over the years at London’s first airport.

In March 2008, British Airways cancelled 34 flights from the newly opened, Terminal 5, after the baggage reclaim system stopped working. Just over a year later, in July 2009, another broken machine caused “chaos” at the airport, preventing the airport from checking in luggage, and stranding 5,000 passengers.

Also, in 2007, an American traveller lost the equivalent of £1245, when baggage handlers at Heathrow left his suitcase out on the airport taxiway in the rain. The man, who only discovered the state of his bag when it was returned to him seven days late, said he was “overwhelmed” by the smell of mould coming from his luggage.

Returning to the present, a spokesperson for the British Airports Authority (BAA), owner of Heathrow and five other UK hubs, said that the aviation firm is “extremely sorry,” for the burst pipe, which destroyed an estimated 240 items of luggage.

The BAA rushed a hygiene firm into the hub to clean up the swamp of (presumably) human waste, but most items were “so contaminated they were not salvageable," according to witnesses. The authority has since pledged to reimburse travellers for their lost items, spending up to £1,000 in many cases.

British Airways and BMI have led recent criticism of Heathrow Airport's decision to increase fees on domestic services in April next year to bring them in line with the fees applicable to European services. Per passenger using a domestic service at Heathrow, the fees will rise from £13.43 to £20.25 when the change comes into force around Easter 2011, whilst an increase in Air Passenger Duty has compounded the concerns of several major airlines which depend, at least partially, upon passengers travelling within the UK.

Both British Airways and BMI remain concerned that passengers who used to rely upon these domestic services now won't be able to take advantage of the benefits that flying offers over other modes of transport, such as coaches and trains.

With airport security measures continuing to add on journey time for passengers flying to any location, raised prices represents yet another off-putting factor for those who may now decide that flying isn't a viable means of travelling within the UK.

However, airlines and passengers aren't the only losers in this situation, since the economies of both Scotland and Northern Ireland receive massive annual boosts from the tourism industry and rely upon visitors taking advantage of cheap flights throughout the year to snap up weekend break deals in the popular cities in these countries.

Whilst the latest news emerging from Heathrow would appear to be doom and gloom for all concerned in the airline industry, with coach and train companies seemingly the only ones rubbing their hands in glee, there is one potential winner in this situation, with regional airports expected to receive higher passenger numbers as consumers look to avoid the hefty fees charged at the London airport.

With price comparison websites increasingly becoming a mainstay in society as Brits seek to combat the effects of the recession, Heathrow may find itself simply unable to compete as cheaper flights and airlines become the exclusive domain of regional air-hubs that might not normally be considered by passengers.

The situation is likely to become ever more complex as the following months progress, with BMI considering legal action against the airport, which itself remains adamant that a hike in fees is necessary for the complex to remain modern and applicable to its status as one of the world's most famous airports.

In any aspect of daily life, especially the workplace, you hope that those in charge of making the rules are willing and able to follow them to the letter. You wouldn't expect your boss to miss a 5pm deadline and you certainly wouldn't expect him or her to miss a morning of work due to a night on the tiles the previous evening. So, it seems likely that those working at Heathrow Airport a few days ago weren't expecting Britain's security minister Baroness Neville-Jones to attempt to carry banned liquids through security.

For a lady who has stated that "the view that the Government takes is that airport security is extraordinarily important and we cannot let our guard down", attempting to take liquids in bottles exceeding the allowed limit (currently 100ml) through security before flying to the USA is, in many ways, unbelievable. The restrictions have been in place since way back in 2006 in order to prevent terrorists from setting off liquid bombs on board passenger flights.

Further embarrassment for the Baroness and the coalition government, who made her their security minister, was revealed when it emerged that the 71-year-old wasn't too happy at receiving a lecture about the liquids from airport security staff. Even though many of us will have had a stern look sent in our direction at airport security after accidentally leaving liquid in our hand luggage, the Baroness, who was made a Conservative peer three years ago, was apparently unwilling to receive such a dressing down, shouting at security staff, "Of course I know how important airport security is, I'm the Security Minister".

The government has announced that the building of new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted has been banned for the foreseeable future. The news was revealed as part of the first major policy review of aviation for seven years, and is a huge blow to the aviation industry.

The announcement was made recently by transport secretary, Philip Hammond, at the Airport Operators Association conference. He confirmed that this was not a temporary measure and that the green agenda is very important for the government.

He stated that the government wants the aviation industry to “decarbonise”, and said that he hoped the review would increase the understanding of new technology and would help the industry to look more into areas such as aircraft made out of lighter composite materials.

The last such review was published by the Labour government in a white paper in 2003. The new review will be launched in 2011 when the Department for Transport will set the questions that the study will need to answer. A draft policy document is expected early on in 2012.

The airports are clearly not happy with the announcement, and Hammond admitted that he knew some of the industry thinks that the government is anti-aviation, although he stressed that this was not the case.

He also confirmed that he was “lukewarm” towards Boris Johnson’s plans for a new Thames estuary airport. He confirmed that he is “free to look at whatever he wants to look at,” but added that it is “not something the department is pursuing”.

Union bosses have warned that an offer to end the long-running battle between British Airways (BA) and its own cabin crew team might be the “best available” at present, with more strikes the only alternative to acceptance.

The offer, which was tabled by BA at the end of October, would reinstate travel benefits to striking staff members, including discounted airfares. The move is a dramatic U-turn for BA boss, Willie Walsh, who told the BBC in March that he would “never” bow to dissenting staff members.
“We told the cabin crew team about the consequences if they went on strike,” Walsh said at the time, defending his decision to strip employees of their travel rewards.

In response, Tony Woodley, boss of workers union, Unite, intimated that there would be no peace unless the “vindictive” airline reinstated concessionary travel to all affected members of staff, some 6,700 individuals.

Returning to the present, Unite’s cabin crew arm, BASSA (British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association) was firmly on the fence regarding BA’s new offer, warning only about the uncertainty of further strikes. The decision, BASSA said in an email to its members, is for “you alone to decide.” However, leaving the ultimate decision to members of BA’s cabin crew is the last thing that the airline needs.

Unite members have already called into question BASSA’s decision not to reject automatically Willie Walsh’s offer, claiming that his latest ‘olive branch’ is remarkably similar to a solution tabled in June. That offer, union members note, was rejected.

Despite members’ concerns, Willie Walsh is confident that BA’s latest offer presents a “genuine solution” to employee gripes; in fact, the Irishman has asked Unite to recommend that BASSA members accept the deal, in a bid to hasten the proceedings, and ease fears of a strike over the Christmas period.

BA’s latest offer does come with a catch, however, and it is one that could castrate the cabin crew unions: Willie Walsh wants all legal action against the airline dropped, and Unite’s members must agree not to strike for the next 3 years. Staff who lost their seniority because of strike action will remain demoted unless they “behave.”

The stipulations mean that some employees will not see their travel perks returned until 2013, when staff are finally reinstated to the same position that they abandoned over 12 months ago.

We have all heard of finger printing and iris recognition being used instead of the good old passport photo to combat security threats and illegal immigration problems at British airports. Now scientists at Southampton University’s school of electronics and computer science have suggested that our ears may provide an even more reliable means of ID, with an accuracy rate of 99.6%.

Each one of us has a uniquely shaped ear and it is now possible to scan them accurately and compare them with a database of images. The technology works by mapping features of the ear such as wrinkles, curves, cartilage, and lobes using something called "image ray transform".

All UK passports now have enough space to hold biometric information, so it would be possible to add details of holders’ ears if this method were to be introduced.

Stansted airport has been conducting trials of facial recognition and retina scanning over the last two years but has encountered several problems. Technology cannot cope with facial expressions or even, in some instances, make up, whilst crow’s feet can also be a major problem. Ears on the other hand (and no pun is intended here) apparently “age gracefully”. Your ears stay the same shape from birth, apart from the fact that they grow proportionately as you age and the lobes elongate slightly.

Whilst Professor Mark Nixon of Southampton University is very excited about the discovery, the Home Office is being a little more cautious, saying that whilst they welcome new and innovative technology, there are no set plans at the moment to pursue the idea at British airports.

Budget airline, BMI, otherwise known as British Midland International, has extended its network of routes to oil-rich countries by adding a flight from Heathrow to Tripoli Airport in the town of Ben Ghashir, Libya.

A spokesperson for BMI noted that the Heathrow-Libya route is aimed at “business and leisure” customers. However, BMI has become a champion of the oil industry in recent years, and the airline's clientele includes hordes of natural resource prospectors.

Libyan oil accounts for 4.4% of the world’s total reserves, around 46.4 billion barrels. The country pumps out an estimated 2 million barrels per day, making it the largest oil producer in Africa.

The country’s enormous potential for oil generation has made Libya very wealthy, but also very controversial, as evidenced by the recent release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi. Megrahi’s release was supposedly lobbied for by oil giant, British Petroleum, in exchange for an exploration contract worth almost £600m.

Whilst BMI’s new route to Libya likely has nothing to do with politics, the airline was forced to allay concerns that it was expanding into the North African country at a time when Anglo-Libyan relations are strained.

The new flight, which begins on December 1 2010, will put BMI in direct competition for customers with UK flag-carrier, British Airways (BA).

Libya is just one of several flights operated by BMI that travel to oil-producing cities. The airline provides routes from UK airports to Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Almaty in Kazakhstan, and Moscow in Russia.

BMI's route between Aberdeen and Heathrow is also recognised as a key link between Scotland and Libya, albeit indirectly; BMI’s lack of North African routes meant that previously the airline had to surrender its passengers to BA at Heathrow Airport.

Heathrow airport always seems to be in the news lately, and much of that comes down to the dispute over the highly contentious third runway that has been rejected by the government. Now the chairman of BAA, Sir Nigel Rudd, has added his two cents worth by saying that the Conservative Party’s policy on the airport to refuse a third runway will see Heathrow become a “second-tier airport” in the future.

There is no room for ambiguity with this description, and Sir Nigel Rudd added that London will become “less competitive” as a result of the decision to keep Heathrow operating with just two runways.

The remarks were made in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, where he said that the decision of the government “is sadly based on small-town politics of the ballot box rather than strategic needs of the nation".

Rudd is just starting his second term as the chairman of BAA, and clearly his comments have been designed to create an impact as he kicks off his second three-year stint.

He is absolutely adamant that Heathrow needs to expand, claiming that the UK as a whole will receive fewer international passengers as a result of the decision whilst other international airports in Europe continue to expand.

The proposed third runway at Heathrow divided the nation with fierce opponents and equally fierce supporters fighting it out on both sides. The opponents claim that with the government taking global warming seriously it cannot possibly expand airports like Heathrow because this is not going to do the environment any favours.

Although the decision has been made, it seems that this is an argument that is going to be around for a long time to come.

British Airways (BA) has expanded its list of global destinations to include the city of Tokyo in Japan. The route, which begins at Heathrow Airport on February 19 2011, travels to Haneda Airport in Ōta, a special municipality of Tokyo.

The Heathrow-Tokyo route will operate five times a week, with each flight lasting up to 21 hours.

BA’s most popular routes underwent a mild transformation earlier this month. The flag-carrier increased the frequency of flights from Gatwick to the Caribbean, and dropped several trips to Florida in favour of a new route to Cancún, Mexico.

However, it appears that BA’s facelift at Gatwick was not the end of its reshuffling operation, as routes out of Heathrow are also being overhauled in preparation for 2011.

A daily flight from Heathrow Airport to Buenos Aires, Argentina, will be turned into a direct route on 27 March 2011, cutting out a short stop in São Paulo in coastal Brazil. São Paulo will then be given its own direct flight to London.

BA’s focus appears to be on the development of long-haul flights at present, or at least those routes that operate out of London.

The airline’s new route to Haneda Airport is an attempt to open up Japan to UK travellers and lure Japanese people to England, according to BA’s press website. The airline also mentions Haneda’s proximity to Tokyo’s business district, which makes the trip “ideal for premium customers".

In the same press release, BA confirmed that an existing route to Narita Airport, also in Tokyo, will continue into the New Year. “Operating from two airports in Tokyo provides customers with greater flexibility,” BA explained.

Heathrow Airport is not known for its ‘green’ credentials, especially after its owner BAA announced its intentions to build a third runway over local towns and countryside alike. But this didn't stop the London hub managing to obtain the Carbon Trust Standard (CTS) earlier this month, an award that recognises efforts to improve carbon efficiency.

The CTS requires a business to provide evidence of carbon reduction that can be seen or measured, and to demonstrate a continuing effort to drive pollution down. Of course, the firm must also have enough money to pay for the initial assessment, between £1,000 and 15,000 to be exact.

Heathrow saved enough energy to power 670 homes for a year between 2007 and 2009, increasing its carbon efficiency by 12%. The airport managed to ‘clean up’ whilst continuing to gain passengers, highlighting the fact that major international hubs can be both successful and environmentally friendly.

Bosses noted that “close collaboration” with airlines and 77,000 airport workers had been central to the hub’s success.

Investment in biomass generators, the tree-powered furnaces that made their debut at East Midlands Airport in April, was another key factor in Heathrow’s eco-crusade, enabling the London hub to manage the heating and cooling of its terminals at a fraction of the cost to the environment.

The airport wants to reduce its carbon footprint even more this year, via the ‘smart operation’ of key facilities such as conveyor belts and escalators.

However, BAA boss Colin Matthews claims that there is “no silver bullet” for combating environmental issues, stating that “this is just the first step on a long road to helping the government meet (the EU’s) strict environmental targets".

UK flag-carrier British Airways is “proud to play its part” in Heathrow’s carbon-reduction strategies, according to environment boss Jonathon Counsell. The airline has reduced its own energy consumption by 19% since 2008, helping to drive down the overall carbon footprint of its current home, Terminal 5.

Shopping website Kelkoo has been forced to apologise to the British Airports Authority (BAA), after a survey sponsored by the retailer was found to contain inaccuracies. The report, which appears to have been removed from Kelkoo’s website, was conducted an independent company, the Centre for Retail Research (CRR).

Kelkoo’s survey focussed on the difference in price between high-street retailers, online stores and ‘tax-free shops’ at Europe’s airports.

The findings placed Lyon St. Exupery Airport at the top of the discount league, closely followed by French comrade Charles de Gaulle; both hubs offered a 12% reduction on luxury items and electronics. Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport came third with a miserable 4.6% discount, whilst poor old Heathrow Airport came last with 3.1%, or 3p in every pound.

However, BAA, which owns the London airport, was not happy with Kelkoo, and issued a press release condemning the survey.

The aviation firm claimed that its prices were not only better than those offered by online retailers such as Amazon and Comet, especially with regard to technology items, but that the discount available was closer to 15%, making it the cheapest airport in Europe.

BAA went on to express its “extreme disappointment” with the survey, with a news item on Heathrow’s website explaining that it was "perplexed as to how Kelkoo reached these conclusions,” adding that “their data is based on inaccurate prices, and includes products Heathrow does not sell.”

Kelkoo has claimed ignorance, and blamed the CRR for all “inaccurate statements” found in the report. The retailer noted that as the research firm is an independent entity, and the survey was conducted without the supervision of Kelkoo, the shopping website had “no way of knowing” that the CRR’s report was unfairly biased against Heathrow Airport.

The BAA has accepted Kelkoo's apology.

Restaurants and cafés inside Heathrow Airport have swapped the croissants for crumpets, and the pizza for pork pies, as the first ever British Food Fortnight gets underway at the London hub.

The event, which lasts from August 26 to September 12, is designed to introduce foreign travellers to traditional UK cuisine.

Culinary staples such as Yorkshire puddings, bangers and mash, and a host of bizarrely named ales (Young’s Waggle Dance and Bishop’s Finger) will be served across the airport’s five terminals, at such swanky outlets as Prunier Seafood Bar, Caviar House, and the Rhubarb Food Bar.

The Harlequin pub in Terminal One will also be serving a unique, one-time-only, ale imaginatively known as ‘The Harlequin.’

Foul-mouthed TV chef, Gordon Ramsey, has prepared a special three-course meal for the Food Fortnight, to be served at his Heathrow restaurant, Plane Food.

The starter, which includes beetroot and goat’s curd, is followed by pan-fried sea bream with wild garlic, and a serving of mashed potatoes.

Other, more common dishes, such as jam roly-poly, char-grilled Tandoori chicken, and even the humble scone, are available at 20 different food outlets inside the airport.

Heathrow’s duty-free stores are also offering discounts on bottles of whisky and various cheeses for the duration of the event.

“We can be proud of our culinary heritage,” explained airport boss, Malcolm Robertson. “As the global gateway of the UK, Heathrow is well placed to promote British food.”

Mr Robertson claims that the airport is “very happy” to be able to offer the best UK cuisine to travellers, many of whom will be taking their first steps in the country.

As smartphones continue their march towards becoming very much the norm for mobile phone users, BA has decided to try to keep up to date with technology by launching an app that allows customers to check in and confirm their seat on the plane.

At present, the app is only available to members of BA’s ‘Executive Club’ (which is free to join), and is only applicable to those travelling between London Heathrow and Edinburgh. However, BA plan to make the app available for use on all domestic flights by the end of August, and are eventually looking to expand the app for use on all its flights.

Chris Davies, head of digital marketing at BA, stated that “the Mobile Boarding Pass feature for Executive Club iPhone users will be especially welcome for those customers unable to print off their own boarding cards when returning from overseas”, continuing to suggest that the focus for BA is “all about improving the customer experience. We’re committed to putting our customers in charge, making the British Airways travel experience even easier.”

With the app free for those who join the ‘Executive Club’ and available on iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries, it is highly likely that it could soon be the normal way of checking in, especially as passengers look to avoid delays and having to carry around mountains of paperwork just to check in for flights.

Although the app is currently available only at BA, should it prove successful it is likely that other airlines will join BA in offering the technology, with easyJet already announcing plans to launch a mobile platform commerce site to capitalise on the increase in smartphone usage.

Travellers who have become accustomed to low prices at airport duty-free stores could be in for a shock when they next visit their local hub, after a survey by online retailer, Kelkoo, revealed that the average price of goods at European airports was just 6% lower than on the high street.

Kelkoo’s survey also found that the public’s perception of airport prices was wildly incorrect, with 59% (or almost 6 in 10) of interviewees expecting to find bargains of up to 20% at airport duty-frees.

Heathrow, arguably the busiest airport in the world, claimed the wooden spoon, offering the ‘worst tax-free discounts’ in Europe, with a rate of just 3.1%. To put that figure into perspective, a bottle of water that costs 75p on the high street would cost around 72p at the London airport – hardly a steal.

Berlin-Schönefeld Airport offers a discount of 4.6%, whilst Lyon St. Exupery and Charles de Gaulle in France knock 11.9% and 11.5% off their prices, respectively. The two French airports topped Kelkoo’s survey, with the best duty free prices in Europe. Gatwick Airport, on the other hand, offers a meagre 5% off a bag of jelly babies or a hairdryer.

Strangely, the value of goods fluctuates enormously between airports, especially with regard to luxury goods, such as handbags and perfume, and electronics. At Heathrow, for example, a designer Dolce and Gabanna handbag will set you back £1,020, whereas the same bag at Rome Airport costs £696, around a third less.

Kelkoo boss, Bruce Fair, noted that airport stores could no longer compete with online shops, which routinely offer discounts of around 12% - “higher overheads, decreased competition, and less choice mean that ‘tax free’ shops are not always the best place to find bargains.”

The survey highlights an ongoing trend of poor deals at UK airports; just a few weeks ago, the Post Office discovered that passengers were being fleeced out of their holiday money by airport bureaux de change, losing £16 for every £286 converted from sterling to Euros.

It has been a bad year for holidaymakers, with the chaos caused by heavy snow, the Icelandic volcanic ash crisis, strikes by BA and tour operators such as Goldtrail and Sun4U going out of business, leaving thousands stranded abroad and others disappointed that they would not be going on holiday.

More misery was predicted for those flying over the August Bank Holiday weekend from Heathrow, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Southampton and Aberdeen as BAA staff threatened to strike over pay. It was therefore a relief for many when the strike was called off on Monday after an improved pay offer was made and Unite, the union involved, said it would recommend that members accept.

BAA had previously offered a 1% pay rise with the promise of another 0.5% if the union agreed to changes in sick-pay conditions. Staff were unimpressed and voted three to one to strike, with 50% of Unite members voting in the ballot.

The new offer is for a 2% pay rise with the promise of at least another £500 lump sum depending on how BAA does with its earnings targets. If it meets them, the lump sum will be increased to £700 and if it exceeds them by 10% the lump sum payable will be £900.

BAA has stated that it needs to keep costs down after such a disastrous year for the industry. Unite, on the other hand, has argued that the industry is coming out of a recession and that it expects the BAA offer to “set the standard”.

Following a year to forget for British Airways, with strikes, volcanic ash clouds and the recession costing the company hundreds of millions of pounds, the beleaguered airline has received a boost after it was named the most punctual airline at Gatwick Airport.

Statistics released reveal that 87% of all BA’s short haul flights left on time, with only 1% less of its long haul flights also leaving on time.

Speaking about the success, Alan Peever, British Airways general manager at Gatwick, said: “We recognise that time is important and that regular punctuality is a key factor when customers choose which airline to fly with. I would like to thank everyone for a real team effort.”

As well as discussing the performance of BA, Peever also gave an insight into BA customers' destination preferences, announcing that customers have been eager to enjoy the company’s cheap deals to Florida. As well as Florida, BA customers have also been looking to the Maldives as well as the Dominican Republic as Brits look to enjoy a summer break.

After recent reports suggested that one of its cheaper rivals, Easyjet, had to increase their expenditure by hiring more staff after statistics showed that the month of June saw only 48% of their international flights depart on time from Gatwick, BA will be hoping that customers choose reliability over cost as it continues to look to improve its financial performance.

If BA can continue to deliver its current levels of performance and does all it can to cut expenditure, the airline should be set for happier times.

There will be no high-speed rail link between Heathrow Airport and the rest of the country, according to Tory transport peer, Lord Mawhinney, until the billion-pound scheme is extended to the north of England.

Mawhinney, who is a former MP, claims that the cost of extending the London-Birmingham route to Heathrow would not benefit the economy; rather, it would cost between £2-4bn at a time when the success of the high-speed rail project is not assured.

The news will come as a huge disappointment to airport bosses, who have already had their hopes of a third runway dashed by the Conservatives.

High-speed rail between Heathrow and the Midlands could have eased congestion at the London hub, and benefitted airports with spare aeroplane slots, such as Birmingham, Manchester, and East Midlands.

Lord Mawhinney claims that the rail infrastructure in the ‘spine’ of the UK, running from Edinburgh to London, needs to be improved. Consequently, the MP claims, the number of people wanting to travel from Heathrow would increase, justifying a high-speed station at the London airport.

“A direct high-speed link to Heathrow will only be in prospect after the network has been extended to Manchester and Leeds, at least,” Mawhinney explained. “Over time there will be greater demand for access to Heathrow, making a direct link more viable.”

Government agents are currently buying up properties in the ‘blight corridor’ between the capital and Birmingham. The houses, which could be demolished when high-speed track is laid, are in the towns of Amersham, Wendover, and Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

The scheme echoes a recently cancelled project by the British Airports Authority (BAA). The BAA forked out millions of pounds to buy homes around Stansted and Heathrow, to save homeowners from the devastated housing market.

Major UK airports including Heathrow, Stansted, Southampton, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh have been threatened with closure as a pay dispute between BAA and Unite escalated after Unite called for a strike ballot of its 6,185 staff.

Following a pay freeze last year, BAA staff had hoped to receive a generous pay rise this year. However, key workers, including fire-fighters, security guards and engineers working for BAA, will start voting on what the union has called a "paltry" pay offer of 1%, with a further 0.5% conditional on changes to the sickness agreement.

Following a long running dispute between Unite and BA, this news comes as a further blow to travellers, with any industrial action looking likely to be held during the busy bank holiday weekend.

Despite Unite’s rejection of the offer, BAA maintain that they believe the offer is “reasonable” given the current difficulties facing the industry. In a year that has seen BAA come under severe pressure following the consequences of the recession and the Icelandic volcanic ash clouds, some travellers may feel that the current threat of industrial action is untimely to say the least.

As both sides appear deadlocked, the UK government has attempted to influence proceedings, with Transport Minister, Philip Hammond, stating that: “We have recently seen the disruption industrial action can cause at our airports, and another strike now is the last thing passengers need. I strongly urge both sides to find a resolution to this dispute so that passengers can enjoy their summer holidays free from the stress and concern that a major strike would bring.”

As the threat of strikes looms, it is all too clear that the biggest loser of the current dispute will be those looking to use BAA airports to take a well-deserved summer break.

The British Airports Authority (BAA) has pulled out of the housing market that it created around two London airports in October last year. The aviation giant had been buying up properties around Heathrow and Stansted, to help locals who had struggled to sell their homes in the light of proposed expansions at the two hubs.

Of course, when the coalition government placed a ban on expansions at Gatwick and Stansted, and axed Heathrow’s controversial third runway, the BAA no longer had a use for the land beneath the villages of Sipson and Harmondsworth and pulled the plug on its budding estate agent career.

The BAA was described as a ‘hassle-free’ and ‘generous’ buyer, often paying up to three times the established value of residents’ homes. Londoner, Andy Hood, managed to sell his family house for £2m, despite its £500,000 price tag. The BAA claims that 57 houses were snatched up as part of the scheme.

Stansted Airport, which aborted its house-buying initiative in December 2009, bought 74 homes in the area that would have been destroyed, had any runway expansions gone ahead. The airport also purchased 130 ‘noise-blighted’ homes that had proved difficult or impossible to sell on the conventional housing market.

The villages around Stansted and Heathrow are in a well-known black hole in the housing market, in which the value of properties close to the airports is significantly lower than those in the surrounding area.

Estate agents in Sipson noted that 83 people had tried to sell their homes before the BAA closed the scheme on 22 June. The aviation firm has not abandoned those who chose to stay in noise-blighted areas, however: free sound insulation is available to householders, and the firm will give a small relocation grant to those who choose to sell up in the future.

A hotel chain at Heathrow Airport has banned all vuvuzelas from the premises, after a resident manager was kept awake by the plastic horns. The firm, Premier Inn, plans to enforce the ban until the end of the World Cup, regardless of whether England is ejected before the tournament’s climax.

The hotel chain was initially unable to stop its guests from playing vuvuzelas, as the firm has no policy regarding the horn, but the hotel’s rules were immediately revised following England’s disappointing clash with Algeria on the 18 June. ‘Guests who bring the horns into our bars will be asked to take them back to their rooms,’ a spokesperson for the chain explained.

A hotel in the northeast was similarly affected during England’s qualifying campaign. Football fans created a trail of noise between Newcastle’s Premier Inn, and pubs and clubs in the centre of the city.

In the space of just a few weeks, vuvuzelas have risen from obscurity to dominate the headlines. The instrument, which was originally used to announce community events in rural Africa, has become a hallmark of the 2010 World Cup, featuring prominently in South African football stadiums.

Very few people have fallen in love with the vuvuzela, however, and supporters and commentators alike have taken umbrage with the horn’s incessant parping. The sound produced by a vuvuzela has been compared to that of a chainsaw – 127 decibels - a full 27 decibels more than the human ear can stand.

Neil van Schalkwyk, the original creator of the plastic horn – or at least, the first person to produce them on such an enormous scale – has now begun selling earplugs to football fans, in a bid to protect tourists from hearing loss. The earplugs, known as ‘vuvuzela unplugged,’ are being sold as the official companion to the instrument.

Embattled airline British Airways (BA) has threatened to move the majority of its UK operations to Barajas Airport in Madrid. Willie Walsh, the flag-carrier’s CEO, is concerned that the coalition government is ignorant to the needs of the aviation industry, after the new Prime Minister axed plans for a third runway at Heathrow.

Runway expansions at Gatwick and Stansted were also scrapped – a vote-winner during the Conservative’s election campaign, but a move that could cost the UK billions in lost investment and trade.

BA estimates that a third runway at Heathrow would have been worth £7bn a year – a huge boost to the PM’s efforts to reduce the deficit.

Spain might seem like an unusual place to move a struggling airline, given the country’s spiralling debt problems, but BA is currently pursuing a merger with resident airline Iberia. The two carriers would be better placed to stave off economic turmoil if they pooled their resources in one location – Barajas Airport.

The Spanish government has invested heavily in its airports, and remains open to further expansion at Madrid – ‘Barajas is a fantastic airport with excess capacity', Willie Walsh explained. The executive went on to caution the UK’s heavy-handed approach to cutting air traffic, stating ‘growth does not go away. Growth will just leave the UK and go to other parts of Europe.’

Heathrow is operating at 99% capacity, whereas Barajas, with its four runways, is operating at 75%. Unfortunately, the only way to solve congestion problems in London is to force expansion at other airports such as Manchester and Birmingham. This is unlikely, given that some of the people who voted Conservative had hoped to see an end to ‘overnight’ expansions by airports.

David Cameron is now working to improve rail links between London and Birmingham in a bid to ‘siphon off’ some of Heathrow’s traffic. But whether the plan will help the UK generate the same amount of revenue as an extra runway or terminal remains to be seen.

London Heathrow Airport now has links to the city of St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador, thanks to North American flag-carrier, Air Canada. The airline plans to operate the route on a daily basis until the end of September 2010.

Newfoundland and Labrador is a province of Canada, located in the extreme northeast of the country. The region is perhaps best known as the location of the ancient Viking settlement, L’Anse aux Meadows, the earliest known European settlement in North America. The village pre-dates the voyage of Columbus by 500 years.

Air Canada’s new route began on May 27. Marcel Forget, the airline’s vice president, has already noted ‘strong support’ for the route, which is expected to cost around £500 for a return journey. The service will be operated by an Airbus A319 aeroplane, capable of carrying up to 120 passengers.

Heathrow will also add five flights to Melbourne to its books, courtesy of Australian airline, Qantas. The carrier already operates a bi-weekly trip between London and the southern hemisphere, using the largest passenger airliner in the world, the Airbus A380. Qantas intends to bolster links with Los Angeles International as well.

The airline has purchased four more A380s in anticipation of its new routes, but the Melbourne-Singapore-Heathrow trip is not expected to take off until the end of 2010 at the earliest. ‘We consider it a priority to increase the frequency of our Heathrow service when the next tranche of A380s begins arriving from late this year,’ airline boss Alan Joyce explained.

British Airways will also benefit from the expansion of Qantas, albeit indirectly. The Australian carrier plans to extend its codeshare agreement with BA for a further five years, adding six new European destinations to its Heathrow schedules. Tickets for the new codeshare routes will be available from June 14 2010.

Consumer publication Which? has branded airport parking charges as “ridiculously high”, following a survey carried out by Which Car?

The survey looked into parking charges for seven days at a variety of on and off-site car parks at 15 major terminals in the UK and also looked at the parking which is often included when staying at an airport hotel and at the meet-and-greet services.

A huge variation in price was uncovered with Heathrow’s on-site parking coming out as the priciest option at £88.70. If Heathrow travellers are willing to put up with a little inconvenience and park off-site then it is possible to reduce this by £35, using Purple Parking.

If you think it might be economical to stay overnight at one of Heathrow's hotels and take advantage of their parking, then make sure you do your homework carefully. A night at the Sofitel Heathrow works out at just under £200 to include a week’s parking. Better rates are to be found at the Comfort Inn.

If you are keen to cut costs, then regional airports turn out to be far more reasonable in their parking charges. For just under £20 you can’t beat Purple Parking’s off-site facilities at Manchester airport. Good bargains are also to be had at Belfast, Liverpool and Bristol, all coming in at less than £30 for on-site parking and under £25 for off-site.

If you have ever been tempted to splash out on the luxury meet-and-greet services offered at many airports you may be disappointed to know that horror tales abound of drivers returning to a flat battery, clocked-up mileage and the wrong keys.

British Airways (BA) was forced to cancel 200 flights on Tuesday, as a strike by the airline’s cabin crew team entered its second day. Willie Walsh, boss at BA, claims that contingency plans are holding strong, and 60% of its long haul flights are flying as normal.

Walsh has begun rebranding BA’s planes with the words ‘keep the flag flying,’ in a bid to raise support for the airline, but there are signs that the Irishman’s perseverance could be about to pay dividends: Unite, and its associated cabin crew branch, BASSA, are being torn apart by infighting.

Speaking to the Times newspaper, an as-yet unnamed member of BASSA’s management team said, ‘Walsh will win. How can he not? To be honest, he has already done it. He has already destroyed the union.’ The informant went on to state that BASSA’s ‘uncontrollable’ managers were jeopardising negotiations between Unite and BA.

BASSA is a part of Unite, but the branch operates from within BA, helping to ease disputes between the airline and its crew. Walsh intimated that relations had soured between BASSA and Unite on 19 May, describing the former as the ‘tail that is wagging the dog.’ The union is apparently powerless to prevent BASSA overruling peace talks with BA.

Unite continues to press for negotiations, but Duncan Holley, secretary of BASSA, believes that talks would progress faster if Willie Walsh was encouraged to ‘step aside.’ The branch hopes that Keith Williams, BA’s financial officer, will prove to be less stubborn than Walsh is, and help stop the dispute becoming a farce.

The current strike at Heathrow Airport will last for two more days. Two more pickets are expected on the 30 May and 5 June. Unite claims that 473 members of BA’s cabin crew team failed to turn up for work on Tuesday. BA managed to find enough workers to get 60,000 people in the air, however, roughly 70% of its usual May traffic.

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Willie Walsh, the current boss of British Airways, has urged Unite to ‘stop and reflect’ on the past few months, after the High Court ruled that a series of planned strikes by the union's members was illegal. Unite failed to follow rules regarding the dissemination of ballot results to its members.

Unite, which represents elements of BA’s cabin crew, had hoped to strike on the 18th May, 24th May, 30th May and from the 5th June onwards. Each strike would have lasted five days, causing chaos at London Heathrow Airport, and preventing some football fans from reaching the 2010 World Cup on time.

The new injunction marks the second time that Unite’s plans have been foxed by the High Court, after a strike ballot over the Christmas period was found to contain votes from people who no longer worked for BA. The union was also honour-bound to withhold strikes over the Easter period, meaning that no actual pickets took place until March.

Willie Walsh has suggested that BA will concentrate on rebuilding its brand now that Unite’s siege of the airline has been quashed. Mr. Walsh still has clear cause for concern, however, if union boss, Tony Woodley, is to be believed. Mr. Woodley called the High Court ruling 'an affront to democracy’ borne from the ‘flimsiest technicality'.

Unite has pledged to challenge the High Court’s decision – a promise that could come to fruition as early as Wednesday, should the Court of Appeal grant the case a hearing. The union has also warned that fresh ballots will be forthcoming.

BA claims to have a number of contingency plans in place that could prove difficult to undermine. The airline has recruited planes and staff from more than 50 carriers, ensuring that 60% of flights will be able to depart as expected. London Gatwick and London City Airport will not be affected by any further strikes, according to BA.

Most people would choose to avoid taking their clothes off in public, given the chance, so when the Labour government forced the installation of full-body or ‘naked’ scanners at UK airports, some travellers began to fear for their modesty.

Five months later, as the machines become commonplace at regional airports, holidaymakers have begun to accept the scanners as a necessity, with 90% of Brits declaring themselves content with current security measures. The use of biometric data, such as iris scans and fingerprints, has also been well received.

The figures, which were collected by software firm, Unisys, led organisers to conclude that privacy was a secondary concern for people travelling by plane. Critics might think that response unusual, however, considering the amount of anger and confusion that has plagued full-body scanners since their introduction in October 2009.

In February, for example, two women forfeited a flight to Pakistan after refusing to undergo a full-body scan. The women were due to fly out of Manchester Airport, unaware that they were about to become the first people to decline the infamous machines. The problem escalated at Heathrow Airport last month, but for an entirely different reason.

Security guard, John Laker, used the scanner to take a photo of a colleague’s naked body, marking the first time that the machine has been used to a nefarious end. With two ‘firsts’ in as many months, travellers could be forgiven for thinking that the scanner’s newfound popularity is skin-deep, at best.

According to Unisys, the British Airports Authority is equally optimistic about the scanner’s future. Neil Fisher, boss at Unisys, believes that more work needs to be done to prevent terrorism, however – ‘what we have done so far is react to threats as they occur, rather than looking at the complete picture.’

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British Airways’ (BA) cabin crew have rejected a new pay deal from the airline, as per the instructions of workers' union, Unite. The news is a disaster for BA, and a disappointment to regular travellers, who could face a total of 20 days industrial action throughout May and June.

Unite claims that the strikes are a last resort, and can be prevented if BA returns to the negotiating table. The flag-carrier is currently preparing its contingency plans, however, suggesting that airline boss, Willie Walsh, has no intention of backing down to the union and its 12,000 members.

Five-day pickets are pencilled in for the 18th May, 24th May, 30th May, and the 5th June. This last strike ends on the 10th June, on the eve of the World Cup in South Africa. Britons hoping to travel to the African republic during the preceding days could face serious problems, including flight cancellations and long delays.

Whilst Unite believes that it is acting in the interests of its members, the union seems to have forgotten that its penchant for pickets produces a domino effect throughout the aviation industry. Pilots, passengers, rich chairmen and holidaymakers, and now even football fans are having their lives disrupted by frequent work stoppages.

Factoring in the effects of the recession and the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjoll, Unite is – ironically – dividing the UK into two distinct camps – those who seek to maintain the power of the unions over headstrong businessmen, and those who are tired of watching the aviation industry crumble into ash.

BA cannot suffer any more strikes without serious damage to its business. The airline lost £45m during the last round of pickets, a figure that could balloon to around £225m if an agreement is not reached by Tuesday. Unite claims that 81% of its members are in favour of continued action against BA, however, which puts the ball firmly in the airline’s court.

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Mother Nature doesn’t like the aviation industry. The eruption of the Eyjafjoll volcano has cost European airlines over £2bn, eaten the savings of stranded passengers, and kept Scottish and Irish airports waiting almost three weeks for a break in the ash clouds.

Unfortunately, Eyjafjoll’s fumes could also force airlines to raise their ticket prices, as carriers such as British Airways and Ryanair bid to recoup millions of pounds lost during six days of cancellations in April. The news comes courtesy of Kelkoo, an online retailer, and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

Tickets from Heathrow Airport, for example, are expected to rise 5.2% before the end of the year, and then again in 2011, by 11.5%. The cost of a British Airways flight from London to New York will rise by £62 to an estimated £540, whereas routes to Spain and Greece will cost an extra £26 and £35, respectively.

Experts at the CEBR believe that airlines will have to find two thirds of the £2.15bn lost to cancellations in April and early May, with airports and operators picking up the slack. Fees incurred from repatriation efforts are expected to be huge. Last week, Bruce Fair, boss at Kelkoo, was feeling pessimistic, ‘Airlines were struggling prior to the ash crisis, but this, combined with soaring oil prices will have a knock on effect on consumers.’ Mr. Fair noted that oil prices jumped 74% in the first three months of 2010, and consequently, operating profits were ‘turning negative.’ The news will come as a disappointment to regular travellers.

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Much to the relief of thousands of British travellers, UK airspace underwent a phased reopening on Wed 21st April. For six days the skies had been silent, following the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland which made flying conditions too dangerous.

The Civil Aviation Authority said that plane engines had shown an increased tolerance to ash following safety tests and it was therefore deemed safe for flights to and from the UK to resume.

Accusations are flying regarding the government’s handling of the situation. Shadow Transport Secretary, Theresa Villiers, accused the government of letting the public down and called on Gordon Brown to instigate an enquiry into the fiasco. He responded by reiterating the fact that safety of the public had been his prime concern. Willie Walsh, chief executive of BA, said that lessons could be learned and that, in his opinion, there had been times over the six days when it would have been safe to fly.

Despite the lifting of restrictions it will take airlines several days, if not longer, to get back on schedule and with an estimated 150,000 Britons still stranded abroad difficult times lie ahead.

Airlines will now seek compensation from governments for the losses suffered, which are thought to be in the region of £1.1 billion.

2,200 stranded holidaymakers are being transported from the Spanish port of Bilbao in luxury aboard the liner Celebrity Eclipse, complete with casino, ten restaurants and a half-acre lawn and spa. Less fortunate, but nevertheless relieved, were 730 passengers who arrived back in the UK courtesy of the Royal Navy on Wed.

Last week, British Airways (BA) was coaxed back to the negotiating table, as talks with general workers' union, Unite, entered their fourteenth month. BA has been embroiled in a cost-cutting dispute with its own cabin crew since the middle of last year, drawing comment from politicians, employment experts, and, of course, innumerable Facebook campaigns.

The beleaguered airline lost 200,000 passengers and £45m during last month’s industrial action, suggesting that BA’s contingency plans are not as robust as airline boss, Willie Walsh, likes to claim. The strike also managed to upset passenger numbers for the industry as a whole, with the British Airports Authority posting a 1.5% plunge in travellers using its six airports.

Unite had previously promised to withhold all strikes over the Easter weekend, in a bid to keep passengers sweet to the union’s cause, but a week of delays leading up to Good Friday had much the same effect on BA’s plans. Budget airlines began offering rescue fares to angry passengers, and the UK’s flag-carrier struggled through one of the most lucrative holidays of the year.

Easter ultimately became the straw that broke the airline’s back, and BA executives were welcomed back to the table by Unite secretary, Tony Woodley – ‘I am pleased that some serious progress has been made over the issues which have divided us.’ The airline was equally optimistic about the future, and offered its crew a new proposal on Monday.

Whether BA’s sudden change of heart is due to the strength of Unite’s picket lines or the news that the airline is heading for a £600m pre-tax loss is debatable, but there will be many people glad to see the end of BA’s pocket civil war, least of all Britain’s many travellers.

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From the end of March, China Airlines will begin offering non-stop flights from Heathrow Airport to the Taiwanese city of Taipei, the first route of its kind in the UK. The trip will operate three times a week, and forms the cornerstone of the carrier’s expansion into European airports.

Taiwan’s Taoyuan Airport has never been able to attract British visitors, due largely to the scarcity of attending airlines and the country’s reputation as an industrial powerhouse, which produces everything from toy soldiers to microchips and bicycles.

Popular culture had already seized on the phrase ‘Made in Taiwan’, and an innocuous manufacturing label became the hallmark of an entire nation, making its way into the Armageddon film script and onto the fictional spaceship Red Dwarf.

With its latest expansion, China Airlines is hoping to change the overall appeal of Taiwan, and turn travellers onto a ‘world of contrasts and a melange of cultural influences’, to quote the Lonely Planet travel guide.

The new Heathrow route will cost an average of £370 for a return trip, and makes use of the giant Airbus A340. China Airlines wants to add 21 new weekly flights between Europe and the East within the next few months.

Also at Heathrow, Emirates is to add an Airbus A380 to its popular Dubai route from the 1st of July. The plane, which is the largest passenger airliner in the world, and the second Emirates jumbo to fly the Heathrow-Dubai route, is capable of holding up to 850 people on two separate decks.

Just as the memory of the disruption caused by the BA strike last month is beginning to recede, travellers are again facing problems with their flight. However, this time it comes as a result of a volcano in Iceland. A recent eruption has produced a vast cloud of ash that has made flying too dangerous.

Many airports in the UK have been shut, namely Aberdeen, Belfast International, Belfast City, Edinburgh, Inverness, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle, and many flights from Stansted, Luton, Gatwick and Heathrow have been cancelled or severely delayed. There will be no flights from any of the London airports after midday and all domestic flights operated by BA have been cancelled.

Flights into the UK have been diverted and there are reports of Trans Atlantic flights having to turn back and land in the States several hours into the journey. With many families returning from their Easter holidays in time for school resuming next week, it is a particularly bad time for the problem to have arisen.

The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland erupted on March 20th after almost 200 years of no activity. But this latest eruption, which happened on Wednesday 14th April, was 10 to 20 times more powerful. The cloud of ash cannot be seen in the UK as it is some three miles up in the sky but meteorologists say ash is likely to come down in Scotland, Norway and Denmark and will affect airspace until tomorrow. Ash can cause danger for engines, landing and navigation gear as well as reducing visibility.

Passengers were advised to contact their airline before leaving to travel to the airport. This may of course be easier said than done with tens of thousands of people trying to obtain information.

British Airways (BA) appears to be winning a high-profile battle against its own cabin crew, that is, if airline boss, Willie Walsh, is telling the truth.

During a second four-day picket by airline stewards, BA halved the number of planes that it had borrowed from other airlines, including several loaned from budget airline, Jet2. Mr. Walsh said that BA’s daily output was not only tolerable, but ‘healthy,’ with up to 70% of long-haul flights completed on time.

Unite, the workers' union, has disputed everything that has come out of Willie Walsh’s mouth, however, and expressed unreserved anger at the Irish executive. The union now wants to raise £700,000 to keep the strike going as long as possible. Thousands of Unite branches will each donate £150 to a ‘fighting fund,’ designed to support picketers' families.

Whether the strike can continue indefinitely depends on the attitude of Willie Walsh and his beleaguered crew. BA has said that the number of strike breakers has risen by 6% over last weekend’s walkout, to 63% overall. Unite believes that attendance levels are closer to 15%, however, with £166 an hour pilots making up the numbers.

Despite the strike, Gatwick and London City airports are running at full capacity, and Heathrow enjoyed a 10% boost in flights over the recent weekend. Passenger numbers were also within normal levels, and BA helped an extra 17,000 people to their destinations on Saturday and Sunday.

From BA’s point of view, Unite is fighting a losing battle against the airline’s impressive contingency plans, but as the vast majority of the figures are copied verbatim from memos circulated by Willie Walsh, there’s no way of knowing who is telling the truth.

You can listen to Willie Walsh's take on the cabin crew strike at the BA website.

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The first British Airways strike has come to an end, with another one expected very shortly. With thousands of passengers certain to be affected by the strikes, especially over the busy Easter period, Gordon Brown recently waded into the affair.

Speaking on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4, Brown said that the strike was “unjustified” and “deplorable”, adding that it was “certainly not in the national interest”. He called for the strike to be called off, but his strong words clearly fell on deaf ears as the strike went ahead as planned.

What makes the condemnation even more surprising is that Unite is one of the largest financial backers of the Labour Party, and it seems that Gordon Brown is picking a fight with his own team. We will have to wait and see just how wise this will prove to be with an election around the corner.

Brown wasn’t alone in his condemnation of the strike, with the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, also calling the industrial action “totally unjustified”.

BA is going to lose millions of pounds in revenue as a result of the strikes, and it is hoping that following the initial strike a deal can be reached. The strikes are being held over BA’s proposal to withdraw one member of the cabin crew from all of its flights in November this year. This would lead to many job losses that Unite considers unacceptable.

BA is carrying out the action in order to reduce costs, which it claims would lead to savings of £60 million. These cost reductions are necessary following the terrible time that the airline has been having recently over the global economic crisis. However, Unite wants savings to be made in other areas.

Heathrow has become the first airport in the UK to start using Continental Airlines' paperless boarding pass system. The American airline has been using the system in the United States for some time, but until now it has not taken off in the UK.

Now customers flying from Heathrow to the US on Continental Airlines will be able to show their boarding pass on their mobile phones. It consists of a bar code, flight information and passenger information, and there is no way that it can be duplicated.

Continental Airlines has the system in place at 42 airports throughout the US, but due to technology and security issues it has yet to become a common feature of air travel around the world. However, it is thought that in the future it could become the main method of boarding identification.

On top of acting as the boarding pass, the new phone passes also provide passengers with further information. They allow passengers to track the status of their flight and look up the amenities on board the aircraft.

Continental Airlines currently runs five flights per day to Heathrow, and this is set to go up to seven per day later in the year. As the paperless boarding system becomes a common feature for passengers travelling to and from the US, it could well start to catch on with other airlines.

Martin Hand from Continental Airlines said that “customers have told us this is the type of product improvement they want,” adding that the airline will “continue to expand the self-service technology” to more destinations.

If the third runway at Heathrow is eventually built, the financial benefit to the UK economy will be enormous. According to the BCC (British Chambers of Commerce), it would provide a boost of £21.7 billion to the economy through increasing the number of flights per day by 400.

The runway was just one of 13 transport projects that the BCC analysed. Altogether, these 13 projects would provide a boost of £85 billion to the UK economy. Heathrow, however, stood out as the project that provided by far the biggest individual financial benefit.

The BCC was concerned about looming spending cuts, and said that spending must not be cut on these important infrastructure projects. This comes despite both the present government and the Conservatives stating that they are going to have to make major public-spending cuts after the election.

The BCC worked out that the total costs for all of the projects came in at £29.8 billion. Although a large figure, this pales in comparison to the total benefit that the transport projects would bring to the economy in the long term. The money to fund the projects would be raised from the public sector and the private sector, with the public sector paying £3.2 billion per year for five years and the remaining £14.3 billion coming from the private sector.

The director general of the BCC, David Frost, said that cuts in transport infrastructure “must not become a politically convenient way to slash spending after an election”, adding that there are much bigger savings that can be made from larger budgets such as education and health.

The EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) has raised serious concerns about the legality of the government’s decision to install full-body scanners at UK airports.

The machines, which use microwave technology to ‘see through’ clothing, have already been introduced at London Heathrow and Manchester airports. The machines are capable of revealing explosive material that would not set off metal detectors and cannot be found using physical body searches.

The chair of the commission, Trevor Philips, said in a letter to the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis that the EHRC ‘has serious doubts that the decision [...] complies with the law’. The commission is concerned that the absence of safeguards mean that the authorities are unable to check if passengers are being discriminated against on the basis of their race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation or disability.

A spokesperson for the Department of Transport said that the safety of the travelling public was the highest priority and would not be compromised. The Department was committed to ensuring that the security measures are legal, proportionate and non-discriminatory. Passengers would be chosen at random and not on the basis of personal characteristics.

The Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, Chris Huhne, expressed concern that the Government was pressing ahead with the use of the scanners without addressing privacy concerns and safeguard issues.

Mr Philips acknowledged that full-body scanning and other security measures are undertaken for good reasons. He conceded that the Christmas Day incident over Detroit where explosives were concealed in undergarments meant stepping-up security levels. However, the concern of the EHRC was that national security policies would destroy the very liberties that they were designed to protect.

British Airways has announced a pre-tax loss of £50 million in the three months to December 2009. Despite yet another quarter of loss making, it was a much smaller loss than had been expected, and as such has led many to predict the start of the recovery process of the embattled airline.

The loss that had been expected was £120 million, quite a different figure to that which BA revealed. The figure of £50 million also compares favourably to the £122 million loss that was announced for the same period in 2008.

On top of that, the quarter saw BA’s first operating profit in 15 months. The company made an operating profit of £25 million, which again led to speculation that the worst was over for the airline. However, this was in itself a small figure compared to the £178 million operating profit it made for the same period in 2007.

All hopes that BA is on the road to recovery also have to consider the fact that, despite the good results for the third quarter, in the nine months to December its pre-tax loss was £342 million, compared to £70 million in 2008.

It is still good news for BA, which is having a hard time at the moment as it desperately tries to avert strike action by the Unite union. This lower loss could help that process. Even so, however, BA also has a pension deficit of nearly £4 billion to deal with, so it is not quite out of the water yet.

Facing defeat at the hands of the Government and the British Airports Authority (BAA), famous campaign group, Greenpeace, is to construct an impregnable 'fortress' in the village of Sipson, near Heathrow Airport.

According to critics, the construction of a third runway at Heathrow Airport would result in the destruction of between 700 and 4000 residential buildings, a community graveyard, and every brick in Sipson. The BAA has offered to buy all these properties but not everybody is keen on moving.

Greenpeace owns a single acre of land in the Sipson area, which it plans to use as the focus of its resistance against the BAA’s bulldozers. Over the next few months, some of the UK’s most pre-eminent architects will be commissioned to design a medieval fortress that will fit inside the Sipson acre.

The winning design will provide campaigners with a tangible blockade against the BAA’s bulldozers and the legions of police officers that are expected to descend on the area should the proposal ever get the green light. Greenpeace hopes to fill the castle with ordinary Britons, rather than vehement activists.

“Whoever wins the next election, they will come under enormous pressure from the aviation industry to push ahead with a third runway”, Greenpeace director, John Sauven, explained. “But if the bulldozers roll they will face a fortress occupied by people who oppose the expansion.”

The Sipson acre is currently owned by more than 60,000 different people across the globe – all of whom would have to be consulted if the BAA wanted to buy the plot of land. The term “legal headache” has never been more apposite.

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Unite has spared British Airways (BA) the ignominy of flight cancellations over the 2010 Easter weekend. The union expressed a desire to see “families travel in confidence,” but made no promises about future industrial action.

It is not the first strike to have bothered BA and Heathrow. During December, a High Court judge ruled that industrial action by the airline’s cabin crew was illegal, as the ballot included votes from people who had taken voluntary redundancy.

Up to 12,000 stewards could have graced the picket lines over the Christmas holiday, enough to ground BA’s entire fleet.

An Easter strike would have been detrimental to BA’s efforts to climb out of insolvency. Last year, BA asked staff members to work without pay in a bid to secure the future of the airline, but money remains tight.

Unite, which is one of the largest unions in the UK, has announced a fresh ballot for the weeks between the 25th of January and the 22nd February. If successful, BA stewards could strike from the 4th March 2010.

BA has refused to roll over, however. A spokesperson for the firm has warned that severe cutbacks will be the only consequence of industrial action, affecting staff travel benefits and the standard of company hotels.

The airline has also frozen pay rates for the next two years, and is encouraging other staff members to retrain as stewards. BA has come to view the strikes as a direct attack on its livelihood.

Crew members are concerned that BA has been reckless with its cost cutting measures, changing contracts on a whim and making too many people redundant.

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Gordon Brown is to force the installation of full-body scanners at London Heathrow Airport, despite claims that the machines would not have been able to detect the substance carried by the Christmas Day bomber, who had sewn explosives into his underpants.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man who tried to blow up a transatlantic fight on December 25th 2009, is one of a number of aeroplane bombers who have precipitated an increase in security measures over the past few years.

The United States is now dangerously close to using passenger profiling to catch extremists, a screening process that is particularly harsh on people from Cuba, Iran, Syria and eleven other countries, so selected for their alleged sponsorship of Islamic ‘terror.’

Despite looking a whole lot like selective racism, US officials claim that profiling has become an unavoidable aspect of the modern world. A host of other countries, including Germany, France, Pakistan and Holland, have also upgraded security at major airports.

In the UK, the use of full-body scanners has been cleared by the government, and installation is expected to begin within the next three weeks. Costing £80,000 each, the machines will allow security teams to peek under passenger’s clothes without having to resort to the fabled strip-search.

Critics are terrified – not only are the machines incapable of catching certain kinds of explosive, but the images produced by full-body scanners contravene UK child pornography laws. They are called ‘naked scanners’ for a good reason.

The government is drafting a code of conduct for the scanners, which should stop inappropriate images being leaked out of UK airports, and into the vast gulf of the internet.

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After the long-threatened British Airways strike was voted in by members of the Unite union, the travelling public were left in fear of facing huge delays and travel chaos over the Christmas holidays. The strike had been planned to cause maximum damage to the airline, and BA knew it. So the directors will now be breathing a sigh of relief after a judge ruled the union’s decision to strike illegal.

If the strike had gone ahead, thousands of travellers would have been affected. The very minimum that could have been expected was huge delays, masses of cancellations and ruined holidays.

As soon as the strike was announced, there were widespread reports of other airlines cashing in on passengers’ woe and raising their ticket prices. Some fares were reported as going up by as much as 40% following the announcement of the strike, by industry experts who checked flights before and after it was announced, with Air France, KLM and Virgin Atlantic all reported to be increasing their fares.

But now any passengers who bought more expensive tickets will be doubly frustrated after the strikes were called off. BA had claimed that the 12-day strike was illegal because Unite had balloted members who were no longer employed, including 800 staff who were taking voluntary redundancy. The airline also claimed that many members had not been made aware that the strike was for 12 days.

In the end Mrs Justice Cox ruled that the members of the union had not been balloted properly and that the strike was therefore illegal, forcing it to be cancelled. The decision was described by Unite as a “disgraceful day for democracy”, but this is not the end of the story. The strikes are now expected in 2010, most likely in February.

The need for a third runway at Heathrow could be done away with if Emirates Eco-Approach takes off. The Dubai-based airline, which is one of the fastest growing carriers to operate out of Heathrow, believes that the way forward is not to build the controversial third runway but to increase night flights.

This may well seem like an environmental nightmare but the plan submitted by Emirates to the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) is perhaps not as outrageous as it might seem. The proposal involves planes flying into Heathrow at a steeper angle than normal (5.5 degrees rather than 3) which reduces noise as well as CO2 emissions, since it results in fewer planes being stacked as they wait to land. Best of all, the plan, if given the go-ahead, would only involve an investment of around £2 million as opposed to the billions necessary for the building of a third runway.

By opening the runway to incoming planes later at night and earlier in the morning, thousands of extra flights could be accommodated, according to the president of Emirates, Tim Clark. There is a current restriction on flights landing between the hours of 11.30pm and 6.00am. The only downside is that the steep descent can only be carried out by the new super-jumbos.

Fierce opposition is to be expected from those living in the flight path who seem unconvinced by Clark’s assurances that the noise of incoming flights would be “like a rain shower”.

The CAA confirmed that it had received the plan but said that it would require careful scrutiny. Heathrow’s owners, the BAA, said that the proposal would not help daytime congestion and that they were looking into controlled descent which is more environmentally friendly than Emirates’ proposed steep descent.

BMI is to downsize its entire operation, cutting flights from Heathrow to the Middle East, and making hundreds of people redundant.

The carrier, otherwise known as British Midland Airways Ltd., is battling to shake the recession from its wings – a contest that the Times newspaper described as a “fight for survival.”

German airline, Lufthansa, purchased BMI in June 2009. Both companies have gone on to make a loss. BMI needs to raise an extra £190m by 2010, or face the ignominy of bankruptcy.

Bosses may be forced to trade Heathrow slots for a chance for survival, which could upset BMI's business plan for 2010. The carrier has already scrapped flights from the London airport to Tel Aviv in Israel, and Aleppo, Syria.

Five more routes could be axed by January, including those to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Brussels in Belgium, the Mediterranean island town of Palma, and the Austrian capital, Vienna. The planes made superfluous by the move will be returned to their owners.

BMI went on to announce a 13% reduction in its active workforce – 600 positions in total, and a further 158 from BMIbaby.

The airline has not stated when or where the cuts will take place, but experts fear that Heathrow could face the worst of the cull, as the vast majority of BMI’s 4,470 employees are based at the airport.

Brian Boyd, an officer at Unite, the largest employment union in the UK, was disgusted with the news – “Far too many employers are treating people’s livelihoods with impunity. To cut jobs so close to Christmas is insensitive.”

In brighter news, Nigerian airline, Arik Air, has launched a new route to London Heathrow. A spokesperson for the airline was delighted to have fostered links with a city of such “great importance.”

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Opened in 1955, Heathrow’s second terminal (T2) has handled over 300 million people in its time, including such iconic figures as Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles.

The building was the first permanent terminal at Heathrow, a history that had begun to show on the brickwork and girders that speared the inside.

On the day of its closure, the 23rd of November 2009, T2 had been operating at 666% capacity, stuffing six million passengers into a space designed to hold just over a million. The terminal was falling down, and officials had no choice but to halt operations altogether.

Today, almost a week later, T2 is scheduled for demolition. Airport officials have earmarked around £1 billion to creating a new terminal, capable of handling over 20 million travellers a year. But all these fancy upgrades come at a cost - Heathrow is losing its history.

Earlier this year, the ancient Queens Building fell foul of rule and regulation, and was also decommissioned, transforming the seasoned airport into a youthful scamp. The oldest building on site is now Terminal 1, built in the early sixties.

Officials hope to spend an impressive £4.8 billion on improving operations at Heathrow. Terminal 1 will face the axe in 2015 to make way for the remainder of the T2 development, and the often-debated third runway could make an appearance towards 2020.

Airfield congestion remains a concern (the two main runways are operating at 99% capacity) but the Conservative Party has made clear its intentions to block the development of a sixth terminal and a third runway, fearing environmental devastation.

Heathrow has shunted eight airlines to Terminal 4 in preparation for the destruction of T2, including Air France, Tunis Air, and CSA Czech Airlines. The full list is available on the BAA Heathrow website. Please check your flight before departure.

A number of passengers are suing Boeing for $1 million each after surviving a crash back on January 17, 2008 when a Boeing plane was forced to make a crash-landing at Heathrow. Although no one died in the incident, quite a few passengers suffered injuries which they are blaming on the aircraft maker.

In all, there were 136 passengers and 16 crew aboard the flight. It had to make an emergency landing when the Boeing 777 lost engine power and was forced to land short of the runway. 10 of the passengers suffered broken bones and other injuries. Now Stewarts Law, a London-based firm, has started action against Boeing on their behalf.

Stewarts Law is claiming that the plane was defective, and it has lodged a law suit with the Circuit Court of Cook County in Illinois in the United States. If successful, the 10 passengers could get up to $1 million (£600,000) each. The lawyers have made it clear that they are not critical of the British Airways staff or pilots in any way following the crash landing, and it is just the aircraft makers whom they think are to blame.

The final report into the accident that is being carried out by the (AAIB) Air Accidents Investigation Branch has not yet been finalised, although there have already been two interim reports. One suggests that the plane suffered reduced fuel flow to both of the engines, and there is also the possibility that ice had formed in the fuel system.

Boeing refused to make any comment, and it now remains to be seen whether the injured passengers will be successful in their bid for compensation.

The paperwork for Heathrow’s controversial third runway could take up to four years to complete, according to the British Airports Authority (BAA).

Around £8bn has already been earmarked for the project, which has been trapped in development hell since the early noughties, and continuously besieged by do-good MPs and eco-warriors, chained to bulldozers and plants.

Perhaps even more troublesome, David Cameron’s Conservative Party is determined to flatten the BAA’s endeavour, should they find the polls sympathetic during next year’s general election.

A few more years of limbo could work in the BAA’s favour, however, if the Conservatives fail to secure a second term of office come 2014 or 2015, a third runway application could face little opposition from a new government.

Whether the environmental pressure groups will back off is a different matter altogether, but the No Third Runway Action Group, otherwise known as NoTrag, remains a firm enemy of the BAA echoing Mr. Cameron’s concerns about air and noise pollution.

The runway proposal is quickly becoming a farce, with conflicting arguments arising from both camps. Just last month, the Conservatives announced a glorious victory over the BAA, a victory that has since proven imaginary.

Director at the BAA, Mike Forster, revealed nothing of his company’s plans – “Nobody knows what the new process really looks like.”

Mr. Forster is concerned that deliberation can only pour salt into the economy’s wounds. Government boffins calculate that £1bn is lost for every year that the runway is not built.

Birmingham Airport has offered to help Heathrow with its capacity issues but unless a high-speed rail network is built within the next few years, the plan remains unfeasible. The BAA has also proposed a sixth terminal at Heathrow.

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Heathrow is losing business customers to rival London airports, according to figures published by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Luton and Stansted have claimed up to 5% of Heathrow’s corporate revenue over the past year.

The recession gets the blame, but CAA officials have moved to implicate the lax performance of premium airlines using Heathrow as a base. British Airways, for example, a favourite of Heathrow flyers, lost over £400m during 2008, as executives looked for a cheaper way to fly.

London Luton, well known for its tumultuous relationship with EasyJet, has stolen many of Heathrow’s estranged business passengers.

The CAA believes that smaller executive pay packets, amounting to losses of around £4,000 a year, per person, are driving customers towards the budget airlines - Ryanair, EasyJet, and Jet2: the kings of many regional and local airports.

Heathrow's woes have greater implications for the capital itself. Experts are worried about the future of London industry:

“A drop of ten thousand business passengers a year would be a worrying indicator, but a fall-off of 1.2 million is horrendous.” Doug McVitie, director of Arran Aerospace, explained. “This will affect everyone from taxi drivers to duty-free sales.”

Meanwhile, Heathrow’s leisure department is booming. Price cuts have helped stuff planes with passengers, but the duration of holidays is decreasing. Fellow Londoners, Gatwick and Stansted, noted that Brits are slashing a full day off their holiday, in an effort to save money.

The CAA claims that the problems faced by Heathrow’s business arm are some of the worst since the Second World War.

The British Airports Authority (BAA) has reasserted its commitment to a third runway at Heathrow by offering to purchase all the houses that lie within the proposed construction site, some seven hundred homes.

At first glance, the plan may seem heavy-handed, but the authority is unlikely to face prolonged opposition – homes in the path of the third runway are almost impossible to sell. Huge sums of money have already been earmarked for legal fees and moving trucks.

It is worth noting that the BAA was presented with a similar opportunity in previous years, but balked at the chance to buy up the villages surrounding Heathrow. Residents could be forgiven for thinking that the aviation firm is growing desperate.

Local MP, John McDonnell, was delighted with the development: “The BAA has finally realised what a PR disaster the third runway has been, but before we can kill off this threat, we need to ensure that local families are protected."

Last week, the Conservatives announced a landmark victory over the BAA, claiming that the aviation firm had given in to Tory pressure, and set fire to its runway plans, ending years of speculation.

Unimpressed, the BAA moved to set the record straight, and within a matter of hours, runway plans were back on track. The authority continues to voice concerns about the future of London industry, and the prosperity of the airport itself.

However, without the support of the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats, the BAA stands to lose government backing by the middle of next year, delaying expansion plans for upwards of a decade.

Residents of Sipson and Harmondsworth in London have been given a year to respond to the proposal, due to arrive on their doormat in the coming weeks.

British Airways has announced that it will cut 1,700 jobs in the latest round of cuts to hit the beleaguered airline company. In addition to this, it will also introduce a two-year pay freeze for its cabin crew and will make alterations to the terms and conditions that it offers its new recruits.

British Airways lost a devastating £401 million last year, and it is likely to record another loss for the second year running. It has already reported a £148 million loss for the first quarter of this year.

The company has already taken some drastic measures to ensure its survival, including asking its employees to work for a month with no pay. Surprisingly, 800 employees did indeed acquiesce to their request.

BA has said that the job losses will result in 1,000 employees taking voluntary redundancy, and 3,000 going part-time. The changes will come into place at the end of November. The job cuts will see the number of cabin crew go down from 14,000 to 12,300.

Unsurprisingly, the news has drawn strong criticism from Unite, the union that represents the workers. It has been in negotiations with BA since the summer over possible job cuts, and has now warned of “serious, drawn-out confrontation” in response. This is likely to manifest itself in strike action over the Christmas holiday period. The union is bitterly opposed to the contractual changes as these would see staff working extended hours with less pay.

A BA statement read that because revenues are down, the company “must reduce costs and restore profitability,” as well as stating that “it is essential we make ourselves more efficient if we are to ensure our long-term survival”.

On Sunday, the Conservative Party claimed that the British Aviation Authority (BAA) had buckled under Tory pressure and abandoned its plans for a third runway at Heathrow International Airport.

Just two days later, the BAA came out fighting, claiming that David Cameron, the leader of the Conservatives, was ignorant of the aviation industry and too stubborn to negotiate with BAA officials.

Mr. Cameron had previously announced that the aviation company would not submit a planning application before the general election, believing the move to be a victory on the part of eco-warriors everywhere.

He was correct, but only in part: the BAA is ’’not’’ capable of completing the planning process before next year’s elections, but the firm remains in full support of a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

The Conservatives have subscribed to a policy of doing whatever the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is not, winning voters over with well-meaning shtick – environmental maintenance, economic growth, and restraints on tax. Blocking the construction of Heathrow’s third runway is a critical facet of their election manifesto.

Instead, Mr. Cameron wants to concentrate on improving capacity at UK airports, effectively removing the need for expansion. However, considering that Heathrow is already operating at breaking point (99% capacity), the Tories are going to have their work cut out for them.

The BAA believes a third runway is the only way forward for UK industry: “We need to maintain this country's global connections to the rest of the world, particularly in an era where long haul links to markets such as China and India are increasingly important.

David Cameron is expected to bury Gordon Brown in the next election, which could put a third runway on ice forever.

Heathrow’s controversial third runway is causing bankers a major headache, despite the fact that it has not yet been commissioned. According to experts at the British Airports Authority (BAA), the UK economy loses £1bn for every year that the runway remains unbuilt.

The London Chamber of Commerce, a business network representing companies throughout the capital, was quick to back up the BAA’s claims, valuing a third runway at £30bn, an incredible boost to the British economy.

Proponents of the plan have cited a continuing loss of commercial entities to the continent, with many international corporations choosing to fly from Charles de Gaulle in France, and from Amsterdam Schiphol in the Netherlands.

British Airways (BA), the flag-carrier of UK aviation, has threatened to suspend all short-haul flights if the proposal is blocked. Considering BA’s current financial situation, however, the airline may have to re-think its allegiances in the coming months.

Heathrow’s critics are well known. Politicians from both wings have been slugging it out, trying to shoehorn their way into the public’s good books.

The Liberal Democrat party claims that the economic boost will be enveloped by the cost of environmental maintenance - a task that could cost the government billions of pounds.

A widely publicised alternative to the third runway, a Thames Estuary Airport, would also do little for the government’s carbon footprint. Huge wetland areas could be drained, uprooting hundreds of species.

Not to be outdone, the Conservatives have pledged to scrap plans for an extra runway at Heathrow Airport – a decision that current leader, David Cameron, could come to regret if BAA figures prove to be correct.

Officials at Birmingham Airport, and the eco-warriors at Greenpeace, welcomed Mr. Cameron’s announcement.

In similar news, the demolition of Heathrow’s oldest terminal building began in earnest at the end of September, in anticipation of the construction of the new Heathrow East site, to be opened in 2013.

BMI has announced cuts to its Heathrow operations, affecting flights to and from Belfast, and to Tel-Aviv, Israel. The airline, which is based in the Midlands, is cutting back on its least-profitable routes ahead of the winter slump.

Several flights to George Best Airport, Belfast, will be merged at the end of October, reducing BMI’s commitment to Northern Ireland by one flight a week. Officials have assured customers that alternative arrangements will be made for those with pre-booked tickets.

All remaining flights to Ireland – amounting to seven flights a week – will retain ‘adequate passenger capacity’ for the winter holiday season, according to BMI representatives.

In a surprise move, BMI has also axed two of its weekly flights from Heathrow to Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

The service, which has operated twice daily since May 2009, has experienced strong competition from rival airline, EasyJet, slashing the price of tickets, and boosting the popularity of the Mediterranean city.

However, the recession has taken a bite out of the holiday market with many UK tourists choosing to holiday in local resorts. With tight pockets all round, BMI is cutting down on luxuries, operating a minimum service for the duration of the winter season.

EasyJet has been quick to capitalise on BMI’s decision, announcing five new flights to Ben-Gurion Airport from the beginning of November. The decision has been welcomed by Israeli authorities, who had been trying to plug a hole left by German airline, TUI.

British Airways and the flag-carrier of Israel, El Al airlines, also offer a Heathrow-Tel-Aviv service.

British Airways has had a bad year, there’s no denying it. Hit hard by the global recession, its profits are not looking healthy and it recently asked staff to work free of charge to help save the company. Now it has tried to ramp up efforts to get up and running again by releasing a series of new inspirational TV advertisements.

Despite the third busiest month on record in July, passenger numbers for August dropped by 0.7%. Overall, during the first half of 2009 international airlines lost over £3.7 billion combined. So it was about time to ramp up a bit of interest in flying abroad.

It’s been two years since BA last advertised on TV. Now it is to release nine adverts over the next few weeks, all shot in a documentary style. The adverts will focus on a number of far away exotic places by featuring different international events that are coming up soon.

These will start with the Mumbai Fashion Week, and will later include the great migration of the wildebeest in Tanzania and Kenya. This is all designed to inspire us to get away and see the world.

The ads were created by BBH advertising agency, and the campaign will also feature online, print, radio, cinema and outdoor advertisements to make sure we don’t miss them.

Abigail Comber, manager for brand, proposition and insight at BA, explained that the ads were trying to remind people about the business and personal experiences to be had in the world, saying that “we want to encourage people to remember there’s a big world out there”.

Signs that the effects of the recession on the aviation industry are receding were revealed recently by BAA, which announced that Heathrow Airport just experienced its busiest month since July 2006 and its third busiest month on record. This was good news for the troubled BAA, which currently has a net debt of £11.3 billion and has been suffering from falling passenger numbers across the country over recent months.

Heathrow saw nearly 6.5 million passengers use its services in July, a 0.9% increase on the same month in 2008. However, other BAA airports were not so successful, with Gatwick, Stansted and Glasgow posting drops of 4.8%, 5.7% and 12.9% respectively. Edinburgh bucked the trend with a massive 5.6% year-on-year increase, but apart from this it was all bad news.

Overall, the total passenger numbers at all BAA’s airports were down 2.4% year-on-year from 14.8 million to 14.5 million. Long-haul flights were actually up by 4.8% for all BAA airports, not including the North Atlantic routes, but domestic routes were down 4.8%.

However, Heathrow’s figures suggest that the airport is still a hugely significant asset for the company. Heathrow actually had fewer flights throughout July, but the increased passenger numbers meant that the airport saw its highest ever passengers-per-plane ratio of 162.

It looks like a last minute dash for the sun has been mainly responsible for the success of Heathrow Airport over the last month. Despite the recession and predictions that most people would be holidaying closer to home this year, some particularly bad weather has seen many people decide that they would like to holiday abroad after all.

BAA may be losing its monopoly on the UK’s airports after it was forced by the Competition Commission to sell off a few of them, but it has now decided to give Heathrow Airport, by far its largest asset, a facelift.

After the initial problems with Terminal 5 and the recent controversy over the new runway, it has been decided that the airport needs to present a different image to the world. BAA has therefore decided that it will be re-branded simply as ‘Heathrow’, with the tag-line ‘Making every journey better’.

The main ways in which the re-branding will take effect will be through posters at the airport itself, and these will be coupled with adverts on screens on the London Underground as well as advertorials in a number of publications.

The main focus will be the number of flights and destinations that Heathrow has to offer, and it will try to highlight the fact that all the recent improvements have made it the best airport in Europe, as well as highlighting its shopping facilities and restaurants.

The re-branding work will be carried out by the firm Masius, as well as being overseen by BAA Marketing and Insight, led by Nick Adderley. He has said that the changes are “about creating real understanding amongst our audiences as to why they should fly through our airport”.

So is Heathrow about to put all its problems behind it as it redefines itself in a new era? Or would it simply have more success if it didn’t get such a bad reputation for mishandling passengers’ luggage? We’ll just have to wait and see.

If you were an international drug dealer, you might imagine that the hardest part of smuggling your wares back into the UK would be getting it onto the plane in the first place. But one drug trafficker has proved that perhaps the hardest part after all is remembering to pick it up after the flight.

That was exactly what happened recently at Heathrow airport, where £800,000 worth of cocaine was left in a suitcase on the luggage carousel.

The first that the UKBA (UK Border Agency) learnt of the haul was when they found out that a suitcase had been abandoned at the airport. They examined the luggage, and were surprised to find that it contained 20 kilograms of cocaine.

The identity of the trafficker is as yet unknown, but what is known is that the drug made its way from Mexico. It is surprising, however, that it managed to get all the way to the luggage collection at Heathrow.

So what happened? Did the passenger have a change of heart when he or she arrived in the UK? If so it was probably the most costly one of their life, and I’m sure there will be a fair bit of explaining to do. Or perhaps they just forgot it? We are all guilty of forgetting things at the airport, after all. But £800,000 worth of goods? That can't be too easy to leave behind by accident.

Anyway, the good news is that there are fewer drugs on our street as a result. No convictions have come about as yet, but a senior investigation officer for HMRC, Stuart Robinson, said that the “investigations into this matter are ongoing.”

It may have been described as a “living breathing advertisement for Britain’s ambition” by BAA chairman Sir Nigel Rudd, but most of the UK remember Terminal 5’s opening for the chaos that ensued, with flights being cancelled and delayed, and baggage disappearing into a black hole on a scale never seen before.

Things did improve but, just as passengers were beginning to forgive and forget Heathrow’s Terminal 5 teething troubles, it seems that the terminal is back in the news again for all the wrong reasons.

As anyone who lives in the area will tell you, the local London clay is notorious for causing problems with subsidence, and an airport is no different in that respect from your average house extension, even though it cost £4.3 billion.

News emerged last week that a form of subsidence called heave is causing the terminal building to be pushed upwards because the clay has swelled. Tiles have had to be replaced in the terminal building and engineers have been called in to give their verdict.

So is it anything to worry about? Opinions differ, with BAA calling the level of movement ”perfectly normal” and the Institute of Structural Engineers agreeing, saying that the movement is merely part of the “bedding-in process”. Greenpeace, however, have called for further information before work starts on the sixth terminal. Meanwhile BAA has been blamed for choosing a cheaper foundation design which will have exacerbated the problem.

With the peak summer holiday period just around the corner, the travelling public will be hoping that the effects of the heave are restricted to replacing a few tiles and that the shambolic scenes of March 2008, described by many as a “national embarrassment”, are not going to be repeated.

If you fancy taking your chances in some of the largest casinos on the planet and like the thought of a wild holiday in ‘Sin City’ then you are in luck. Getting to Las Vegas from the UK has just become even easier thanks to a new flight from British Airways.

BA has recently made the announcement that it is adding a direct flight from Heathrow to Las Vegas starting later in the year, meaning travellers will now be able to benefit from greater convenience when heading to the gambling capital of the world.

The new flights are planned to start from October 25th, and BA has announced that it is now open for bookings. This will add Las Vegas to the other 18 US cities that BA currently flies to direct from the UK, including Chicago and New York.

BA is pretty certain that it will have enough interest in the new route to make it worthwhile. A spokesman for the flight operator, John Lampl, said that “we think there is going to be plenty of business out there.” And with the recession in full swing, perhaps BA will be cashing in on people trying their luck at The Venetian, Caesar’s Palace and the other world-famous casinos that the city has to offer.

If you fancy taking the trip then a return flight, including all taxes and fees, will start at £467. You will also be able to travel in style to make the trip even more memorable because the Boeing 777 that will fly the route comes equipped with a Club World cabin which includes flat beds.

Richard Tams, a spokesman for BA, said that “we know how to fly high rollers in style”, calling the new flight the “ace in our pack”.

After the arguments surrounding the confirmation that a controversial third runway is to get the go ahead at Heathrow, Britain’s largest airport found itself facing very different difficulties last week when the heaviest snow for many years saw it come to a virtual standstill.

Heathrow seemed to fare far worse than many of the other airports, with The Telegraph reporting that nearly 800 flights were cancelled due to the bad weather, with countless more suffering terrible delays. For a time, the 11 cm of snow that fell at the airport caused both of its runways to be closed, causing absolute havoc.

The main flights to suffer were the short-haul flights, with the long-haul flights taking priority. Many of the flights were simply diverted to other airports across the country, which will have caused a lot of upset and hassle for many passengers.

The bad weather led to one potentially serious event when a Cyprus Air plane skidded off the runway and lodged its front wheel into the grass at the side.

According to the BBC, this was the last flight to land before the runways were closed, and when it comes to such serious incidents then the authorities really would not have had a choice.

But the question remains as to how such a relatively minor amount of snow, when compared to other countries at least, can lead to such chaos. However, the truth is that the rarity of such weather means that it simply does not make sense for Britain to invest in the snow-clearing facilities that other countries, which experience such conditions every year, make use of.

Transport Secretary, Geoff Hoon, gave the go-ahead last week for Heathrow’s third runway after deciding not to increase the number of flights on the existing runways. The development will cost an estimated £8 billion and will increase flights by 350 a day. Passenger numbers will rise from 66 million a year to 82 million and traffic congestion on the arterial roads around the airport will of course increase as well.

Hoon brushed aside worries about environmental damage, putting the country’s economy before such concerns. The Government has, however, made some concessions to the green lobby: the new runway will only operate at half capacity when it opens, planes using the new runway will have to meet strict green standards, and CO2 emissions will have to be limited to the levels of 2005 by the year 2050.

Protesters are meanwhile devastated by the Government’s decision and have vowed to take on the aviation industry. The village of Sipson which is likely to be demolished will become “the battlefield of our generation” according to the director of Greenpeace. Residents and environmental protesters are already being advised by climate change activists over what action to take and how to handle security guards and police. Some of these activists were involved last year in the action which closed Stansted airport.

Not surprisingly, most of the passengers surveyed at Heathrow on the day of the announcement were in favour of the third runway, with the promise of shorter queues and more flights to choose from, although many sympathised with the local residents as well.

A controversial new airport widely regarded as an alternative solution to Heathrow’s expansion plans will serve the country better than London’s most famous facility, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has said. Mr. Johnson will lead a feasibility study into the construction of the new facility in the coming weeks.

The airport, which will be built in the Thames Estuary, will commandeer all operations currently conducted at Heathrow and will be connected to the capital by high-speed rail and road links. Proponents of the scheme hope that the new airport will help alleviate congestion problems in central London and prevent the violation of EU laws regarding pollution in an urban area.

Boris Johnson does not like Heathrow. Earlier this year, the mayor denounced the airport as a poorly-planned facility that should be removed from active service. His sulphurous attack on the site appears to have blinded him to more pressing issues; issues that could damage his reputation should they be ignored.

The Thames Estuary is an internationally recognised sanctuary for water birds. It is also protected by the European Union. A report commissioned by the RSPB lists 200,000 waterfowl and birds, and 12 endangered species as key reasons why Boris’ “Heathrow-on-Sea” is doomed to fail.

"It is difficult to envisage a more problematic site anywhere in the world", the report concludes.

The RSPB and its associates are hoping to celebrate a third successive block of a proposed airport in the estuary. In the 1960s, a proposed airport at Maplin Sands prompted an extensive study of the local wildlife. The airport never got off the ground. In 2002, another proposal – this time at Cliffe in Kent – was squashed.

The government is expected to vote on the Thames Estuary airport at the end of the year.

The chaos that blighted the opening of Heathrow’s Terminal Five, which cost over four billion pounds to construct, could have been avoided, according to a report released this week by a committee of MPs. British Airways and BAA, the operator of the airport, have been heavily criticised in the report, for causing a national embarrassment.

Their “serious failings” have been detailed in a parliamentary transport committee document which was drawn up in order to explain the reasons why the opening of the new terminal proved to be such a disaster. There were numerous problems with the opening of the terminal, including a serious failure with the baggage system. Over twenty thousand bags were left stranded as a result of the inefficient system.

MPs believe that the opening of the terminal in March of this year should have been “an occasion of national pride” but instead, it became a debacle which embarrassed the entire nation.

British Airways has accepted that inadequate and insufficient training led to the problems during the first few weeks of the terminal’s operation. The airline has revealed that testing of important IT systems was unexpectedly delayed until the end of October 2007 and this affected the ability of its staff to become familiar with the systems. British Airways also stated that they should have “delayed the move” in order to ensure that staff and systems were ready for the opening.

The general consensus at the moment is that Terminal Five has put its initial problems firmly behind it. British Airways believes that the terminal now provides the “best customer experience Heathrow has known” for several years. Furthermore, the airline holds frequent meetings with BAA in order to review the airport’s performance.

David Cameron's plans to scrap the proposed third runway at Heathrow and invest instead in high-speed rail links have been blasted by the aviation industry, business groups, and political opponents. Most outspoken of all are BA, who have accused the Conservative party of putting the country’s economy at risk and ignoring the views of the business community by putting the nation’s air links “in a strait jacket”.

The Tories have proposed a high-speed rail link from Heathrow to Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester but BA has been quick to point out that passengers from these cities flying to and from Heathrow account for a mere 3% of air traffic.

BAA, which owns Heathrow, has also expressed its disappointment over the Tories’ plans, saying that the proposed rail link would do nothing to ease the over-crowding at the airport. Numerous business organisations are in agreement with BAA but the green lobby is predictably in favour of a shift towards investment in rail transport. If the Tories win the next election, construction of the new line would start in 2015 and would last twelve years costing £15.6 billion, with private funding accounting for another £4.4 billion.

The Liberal Democrats are all in favour of the Tories’ proposals but have said that it remains to be seen whether the plan is just another of David Cameron’s “empty promises”. Ruth Kelly, the departing transport secretary, has described the proposals as being “politically opportunistic, economically illiterate and hugely damaging to Britain's national interests". The Scottish National Party meanwhile criticises the fact that the plans leave Scotland out of the equation.

When an industry is in trouble, is it the best move to open doors or to close them? Does it make sense for a financially struggling football team to buy new expensive players in the hope that they generate more money somehow? Does it make sense for Heathrow to be thinking about building the long debated and now infamous third runway?

The dramatic rise in fuel prices means that airlines have been stretched to their limits. Some of the smaller companies have had to give in and hang up their boots, XL being the latest. The fuel price is the biggest blow to an airline, but, according to a report by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) this month, a large proportion of that fuel could and should be reduced if planes didn’t have to circle over the airports waiting for a runway to become available.

Heathrow might be the busiest international airport in the world, but its two runways are being pushed to their limits. Advice has been generated by the management consultants Mott MacDonald and their director of Aviation Strategy, Laurence Price, made it pretty clear that building a new runway at Heathrow would help the airlines cut down on the amount of fuel they have to pump into their planes. At the moment airlines are forking out roughly 40% of their costs on fuel alone. Is it time to start speculating to accumulate?

London Mayor, Boris Johnson, has long been an outspoken critic of both Gatwick and Heathrow, saying that the potential success of the 2012 Olympics could well be jeopardised by the inefficiencies of the capital’s airports.

He has now come up with the idea of a phased closing down of Heathrow (and possibly Gatwick too) if his plans come to fruition for a replacement airport in the Thames estuary, probably on a man-made island two miles north of the Isle of Sheppey. The water is only ten to thirteen feet deep there and the island for the airport could be constructed using landfill. With no neighbours to consider, the airport could operate 24 hours a day and expansion to six runways from the four initially planned would not be a problem either.

High speed rail links would whisk passengers to and from central London in around 35 minutes and a rail connection to the Channel Tunnel would mean that the Continent was also easily accessible, with an estimated journey time to Brussels of just an hour and a half.

Boris Johnson takes his inspiration in part from Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, which was built on reclaimed land and opened in 1998 after a $20 billion building programme. It operates 24 hours a day and has won various awards for being the best airport.

Johnson thinks that his plan could be the answer to the heavy congestion at Heathrow, which was recently described by one former airline chief as a “third world airport... a national disgrace”. Heathrow would in turn become a British Silicone Valley with high-tech business parks and affordable housing.

The travelling public will have to make their own minds up – have BA been caught trying to dupe passengers with their advertising campaign, or was it an honest human error?

Earlier this month, The Sunday Times brought to light an inaccuracy in the BA Terminal 5 advertising campaign which claimed on its website that 90% of its flights “were taking off within fifteen minutes of its scheduled time”.

Not so said critics, pointing out that BA were actually talking about the time planes left the terminal (a Civil Aviation Authority convention) and not when they actually took off. Given the high incidence of delays at Heathrow as planes taxi for up to half an hour waiting for a slot, the wording of the advert was misleading at best. BA blame a human error on the part of their marketing staff and advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

BA are spending £6 million in an attempt to persuade the public that T5 is now working well, despite its rocky start this March when chaos reigned, with flights cancelled, baggage lost and passengers enduring a thoroughly miserable experience. After the Sunday Times made its revelation, the wording was quickly changed to: “Yesterday at T5 90% of flights left on time”. The website aims to provide passengers with up-to-date statistics on delays and arrivals and also average check-in times.

Rivals Virgin Atlantic were quick to step into the fray, saying that BA avoid the evening peak period when calculating the average check-in time. They are expected to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Concerns have been raised over mixed-mode runways after a close shave at Heathrow airport at the end of last month. At the moment Heathrow operates segregated alternated runways, meaning that arrivals use one runway and departures use another, with the usage being switched round at regular intervals to share out the noise problem of arrivals between local communities. Mixed-mode runways allow for runways to be used for a mixture of arrivals and departures. This would mean a potential increase of 15% capacity or an extra 60,000 flights a year.

On July 28th, a BA plane leaving the southern runway came close to collision with a Virgin flight taking off for New York from the northern runway. The Virgin flight did not in fact land but carried on climbing, meaning that the pilot of the BA flight had to take evasive action as the other plane cut across his path, leaving a gap of only 20 seconds.

Tom Beaton of Isleworth in Middlesex, who witnessed the manoeuvre - technically termed a “go around” - is convinced that disaster was imminent and sees this as a clear indication of how dangerously crowded the airspace around the airport is. He feels that the desire for profit has meant that people’s normal “human and moral judgments” have “deserted them”. If mixed-mode runways were to be introduced at Heathrow, the economic benefits would be worth an annual £2.5 billion.

As well as safety fears, there are grave concerns that local residents would be offered no break at all from the noise of arrivals, complaints about which vastly outweigh grievances over planes taking off. Campaigners say that the respite from the noise is the only thing which keeps residents sane.

A Boeing 747 flying from Heathrow to Melbourne last month was forced to make an emergency landing in the Philippines after a hole the size of a car appeared in the undercarriage.

Qantas flight QF30 had only just left Hong Kong when the problem arose and the pilot had to make an emergency descent from 29,000 feet to 10,000 feet as pressure problems in the cabin suddenly became apparent.

Passengers describe hearing a loud bang, feeling a rush of air and seeing a large hole exposing the cargo beneath the floor. Oxygen masks were quickly donned and passengers praised the quick action of the pilot and co-pilot which led to the situation being resolved safely.

At first there were fears that this explosion may have been terrorism related, but sniffer dogs at Manila airport were unable to detect explosives and this has since been ruled out. It now seems likely that an exploding oxygen cylinder in the hold was responsible for the blast, and Qantas are now examining all oxygen cylinders on its 747s.

Qantas has the reputation of being the world’s most trusted airline and prides itself on never having had a fatal crash. The Australian media has, however, reported various misgivings over dropping standards as more and more maintenance work is outsourced abroad. Even pilots for the airline have complained about safety standards being eroded because of commercial pressures.

The Australian Civil Aviation authorities announced yesterday that a two week investigation of Qantas' safety standards was to be carried out as a result of the incident.

You must have been living down a hole if you weren’t aware of some of the nightmares Heathrow airport has been having over the past year or so. It might come as a surprise then to hear that the west London mini-city is the world’s busiest international airport. The World Traffic Report by the Airports Council Internationals (ACI) has revealed that Heathrow is the overall winner in terms of passengers coming through its doors and has clocked up a staggering 62 million passengers in 2007.

Europe is certainly where the most people fly. From the top five airports on the list, four were in Europe and the other was Hong Kong, which came in fifth but with a pretty impressive 46 million passengers a year.

After Heathrow came Paris Charles de Gaulle, then came Amsterdam and then Frankfurt. But these international airport figures differ from those that include domestic flights. If this were taken into account too, then Heathrow would come second to Chicago O’Hare, which clocked up 76 million passengers in 2007, that is more than the entire population of the UK.

To cope with the demands of 62 million people Heathrow has its 5th terminal and we all know about that. There have been plans for a third runway too but there is speculation over this as a £30 billion train link from the north to the south of Britain might take precedence.

Times are hard and airlines are set to feel the pinch in passenger numbers once the summer peak is over. However, news that bmi may fly so-called "ghost flights" this autumn, with very few or even no passengers on board, has caused outrage.

The ghost flights which operate purely to retain valuable slots at Heathrow are said to be necessary because of the “use it or lose it” policy in operation; if airlines do not use a slot eight out of ten times over a period of six months the slot is lost. For this reason cancelling under-booked flights, which may seem like the sensible solution, is simply not an option.

A peak time return slot at Heathrow has been valued at between £25 and £30 million, which perhaps goes part way to explaining the drastic plans being considered by airlines. Flybe, for instance, which operates out of Exeter, has taken the unusual step of recruiting actors to stand in as passengers on flights between Norwich and Dublin, in an attempt to meet passenger targets and avoid a hefty fine.

The recent plans have been described as “environmental vandalism” by Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth, whilst the shadow Transport Secretary, Theresa Villiers, has also slammed the plans as not only damaging the environment but making no economic sense either.

On the same day that the story broke in the Times, bmi issued a strong denial that it would run “empty or near empty” flights from Heathrow and dismissed the reports as being without foundation. Meanwhile BA have given assurances that they will deal with the problem by instigating “sensible cuts” rather than fly ghost planes.

Not many people in the UK, or even in the world for that matter, will think of Heathrow Airport as having the best of reputations in recent times. It’s been in the news for all the wrong reasons and now it’s set to get even worse, as a recent survey by the Association of European Airlines has revealed that it’s the worst airport in Europe.

In a survey of 27 airports, Heathrow came out worst with 50% of its flights leaving 15mins or more late. So far this year the average delay time for outbound flights has been 39 mins, compared to only 17% of flights running late from Munich airport. There's more bad news with flights coming into Heathrow. Inbound flights are delayed by an average of 46 mins.

As a measure of just how bad it’s getting and how annoyed customers are, a Dutch airline has now had to set up a UK office to cope with the hundreds of complaints a week in relation to delays. They say their customers are entitled to up to £115 million compensation per year.

So what’s the problem? Well a lot of it has to do with the fact that Heathrow is totally packed to the rafters, even with the now infamous T5 on tap. There is no spare runway to help with crowded periods and it seems there’s now no end to the excuses with even the weather being cited in some instances in true British fashion. Is it time for bosses to step down? Or time for us to fly from somewhere else? If only we had a choice.

One hundred days after Terminal 5 opened and chaos ensued, Willie Walsh, chief executive of BA, has said that each day he receives correspondence and comments from passengers complimenting him on the £4.3 billion terminal.

As we all recall, the teething problems with the new terminal included issues with staff being able to park and clear security, over 500 cancelled flights, computer systems failing and 28,000 items of baggage being delayed or even lost. Now, however, it seems that all has been forgiven and customers love the whole Terminal 5 experience.

Apart, that is, from some business passengers. One aspect which did not please them was the lack of a separate check-in. Following feedback, BA are, however, planning a dedicated check-in for all premium passengers plus an extra business class lounge.

Punctuality and baggage handling have been improved in the last 12 months and checking in is a lot more efficient. Indeed, the rationale behind not providing a dedicated business class check-in was that there would never be a queue at any of the check-in desks.

A union representative, however, has thrown the cat among the pigeons by alleging that Mr Walsh’s assertions may not be completely true. The representative, who works as a baggage handler at Terminal 5, told a committee of MPs that a staggering 932 bags are lost each day at the airport.

Mr Walsh has played down the accusations and states in a letter to a national newspaper that the bags are merely delayed as a result of incoming flights on other carriers arriving late and bags not making the connecting flights on time. This is not a fault of BA or Terminal 5, according to Mr Walsh, and indeed the system at the new terminal means that bags are processed quickly and often make the next flight.

In June this year, in his first major speech on the environment, David Cameron said that if the Tory party were to win power, they would block a third runway at Heathrow. He cited the chaos at Terminal 5 a few months ago as evidence that the expansion plans were doomed.

Previously the Conservatives had stated that they would demand strict environmental tests before agreeing to a third runway but the party now appears to have hardened its stance. Cynics would say that the fact that the Tories have marginal seats in parts of south west London affected by Heathrow may have something to do with it.

David Cameron attacked Gordon Brown for “pig-headedness” in proceeding with the plans. Labour countered the attack by pointing out that if Cameron were Prime Minister, he too would face pressure both from the City and the airlines to allow expansion.

The CBI and the British Chamber of Commerce were both disappointed by the Conservative leader’s attitude and Willy Walsh, chief executive of BA, went as far as saying that if Heathrow’s expansion plans were blocked, UK businesses may have to consider moving abroad in order to attract investment and promote their goods and services overseas. He also said that the idea that a third runway would merely lead to more transfer passengers was nothing but “a myth”.

Colin Matthews, head of BAA, has meanwhile told an aviation conference that the airport’s transfer passengers are vital to the economy. He said that if people living and working in the UK had to fly to Paris or Amsterdam to catch connecting flights, the UK economy would undoubtedly suffer.

A supermodel is not a superhero. You can’t get away with smiling sweetly and fluttering your eyelashes at judges. Naomi Campbell might be one of the most beautiful women in the world but she didn’t look it when she lashed out at British Airways staff in April 2008 and now she’ll have to get her work clothes on to do 200 hours community service for her sins.

This is how it went. She was on a BA plane going from Heathrow to LA in April. It was around the time of the now infamous Terminal 5 muck up. NC was on a plane sitting in first class. Her suitcase got lost, along with those of half the passengers. The case contained a YSL outfit she was contracted to wear on a US TV show. She demanded her bag be found and wouldn’t get off the plane until it was. Then the Captain was called (Cap Miles Sutherland) and NC lashed out at him swearing and being aggressive. She sat tight and called everyone a racist so the police were called. Her stilettos then became involved and connected with PCs Eastick and Campling on the shin and thigh respectively, along with spit and a heap of bad language and assurances that she’ll “sue them like a m***** f***er”. She was arrested soon after.

This month saw Campbell stand trial for these charges, plead guilty and instead of facing a prison sentences, which might have seemed appropriate considering she has now had quite a history of violent outbursts, she was given a stern telling off and 200 hours community service, fined £2,300 and made to give her pocket money of £200 to the policemen and £150 to the Captain. BA passengers will be pleased to learn that she is also now banned from flying with the airline.

Qantas are all set to operate the world’s largest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, on selected flights from London Heathrow to Sydney starting early next year.

The 16th of Jan 2009 is D-Day for the first flight on the route and they will operate on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the same days as the A380 Heathrow to Singapore route.

Although the plane is capable of transporting a staggering 853 passengers if an all-economy configuration is employed, Qantas plan to have 14 seats in First Class, 72 in Business Class, 32 in Premium Economy and 332 in Economy. All four classes promise to allow passengers extra space and comfort and, whilst they will miss out on the flat beds, even economy passengers will be able to help themselves to refreshments from the self-service bar or choose from over 1,000 entertainment variables on demand.

It is good news for the environment as well, according to Rob Gurney of the Qantas Group, with the new planes coming with good fuel consumption, reduced emissions, and less noise.

The first Qantas flight using the new A380 will be on 20th October, when the weekly Melbourne to Los Angeles return flights start. There will also be a weekly Sydney to Los Angeles return service. The following month another A380 will be added to the fleet operating two Melbourne to Los Angeles return flights and three Sydney to Los Angeles returns.

To celebrate the new London to Sydney route, Qantas were offering a fare of just £380 return, all inclusive of taxes and charges, for travel next March and April. Needless to say the bargains were snapped up quickly!

Strict EU laws were introduced last year governing pollution levels from 2010 but, according to a report in The Times newspaper, the Government is intending to apply for a five year exemption in order to facilitate the proposed expansion of Heathrow airport.

This would mean that 60,000 extra flights per year would fly over London, and 25 million extra road journeys would be made as a result, with the worst affected area being the M4 corridor. Fears that this would have a disastrous effect on those with respiratory diseases are well founded, with the possibility of more premature deaths caused by the rise in nitrogen dioxide from vehicle exhaust emissions.

A proposed change in usage of the two existing runways would cause misery to those living in the flight path. As things currently stand, residents have a half-day rest from the noise and pollution. One runway is used for take-offs and the other for landings, and these switch over each day at 3pm. The Government would, however, like to introduce mixed mode usage, with each runway effectively being treated as a separate airport, thus allowing take-offs and landings at each.

Local residents are not taking this lying down, however, and a number of leaders from local authorities in the area who represent the two million people involved are heading to Strasbourg to ask the European Commission to refuse permission.

Somewhat embarrassingly for the Government, it has been revealed that the plan has been sneaked into the report by the Department for Transport, which was the subject of public consultation earlier this year.

The most superstitious amongst us would no doubt have avoided flying on Friday the 13th, but even the most rational of passengers flying out of Heathrow last Friday must have wished they had stayed at home.

First of all there were delays, caused by a "dress rehearsal" held in advance of the weekend’s visit to London by President Bush. Four of the President’s fleet of helicopters caused disruption when they landed and sat on the ground for an hour as part of this rehearsal.

Then there was the problem of the weather for those passengers headed across the Atlantic. Winds of up to 200 mph were reported which, combined with the lack of a tailwind, meant delays for trans-Atlantic flights.

Richard Cook of Fetcham in Surrey, who was headed for Miami en route to Belize for a fishing holiday, had more cause for complaint than most. A passenger on his flight had felt unwell before the plane took off and decided he was unable to fly. This involved an hour’s delay whilst the baggage belonging to the passenger was unloaded from the hold. On arrival at Miami, Mr Cook was told, to his surprise, by Immigration that his fingerprints did not match those provided last time he visited the States and he was detained for an hour whilst questioned by Immigration officials. Meanwhile his son, Chris of Harefield, Middlesex who had flown down from a holiday in Boston to join his father, was fuming at having had to pay a hefty excess baggage charge after a change in regulations by his American carrier regarding carriage of fishing equipment.

With the cost of fuel constantly on the rise, and airlines such as Ryanair announcing the devastating effects that fuel prices are having on their profits, will this price be passed onto the consumer? And will it put us off going on holiday?

British Airways hiked its fuel price surcharges twice last month, taking the fuel levy for a one-way flight up from £30 to £109. However, at the same time, Ryanair has announced the release of 500,000 new seats for £10 and has vowed never to introduce a fuel surcharge.

But this is not a trend that all budget airlines are following, and the price of a ticket is not the only problem travellers are likely to come across. BMIbaby, which flies to fourteen destinations across the UK and Europe, is considering cutting flights because of the dramatic rise in fuel bills.

So not only could passengers be expected to pay more for their flights, but if they are prepared to part with a few extra pounds they may have trouble finding a flight in the first place. And although Ryanair has promised never to charge us a fuel surcharge, it already has a charge for checking in.

But will this put us off booking our annual week in the sun? Well, budget airlines are a relatively new phenomenon, which have made it easier for everybody to afford a yearly getaway. And we must remember that consumers are already suffering from the fuel hikes at the petrol pumps, so we are all already a little shorter on cash.

Perhaps we should make the most of budget travel whilst we can and before they all go bust. Then all we can hope for in England is a long, hot, Indian summer to keep us all happy.

Holiday makers flying off for some early summer sunshine over the Bank Holiday weekend could have been forgiven for mixed feelings about their jaunt if they were flying out of Heathrow’s new Terminal 5.

It was opened by the Queen on March 27th this year amidst much media hype about the wonderful experience it was going to be. Sadly, things did not go to plan and on day one the problems included a flash mob of 250 protesters opposed to airport expansion, troubles with the car park and the security screening of staff, a break down of the super-sophisticated baggage handling system and dozens of flights cancelled as a result.

Those unfortunate enough to be flying out late in the day were not allowed to take along any checked-in baggage and were instead presented with the stark choice of traveling with hand luggage only or not traveling at all.

By the following day yet more flights were cancelled and the luggage backlog was beginning to grow. Passengers flying into the chaos had to wait up to four hours for their luggage to arrive. Over the following days yet more flights were cancelled, and by March 31st there was a pile of some 28,000 cases. Two days later a decision was made to send these to Milan - thankfully by road – to be sorted out there.

By mid April heads were rolling, but not that of Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, whom many passengers caught up in the chaos would like to see go. Around the same time, major insurance companies were refusing to offer cover for lost baggage or cancelled flights from Terminal 5, although they resumed normal cover within days of the announcement when the system was deemed to be working satisfactorily.

Last Friday BAA announced that they were confident that the terminal would be able to cope with the increase in passengers flying out for the holiday weekend. Fortunately, there has been a distinct absence from the television screens of the sort of scenes that appeared with depressing regularity in the first weeks of the terminal’s operation.

Labelled a "national disgrace" by Lord Lamont and described by London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, as "a shame" on London, Heathrow airport has certainly had more than its fair share of problems in recent years.

First, there are the lengthy check-in queues, meaning that for short-haul flights, passengers spend more time on the ground than in the air. Then, there are the notoriously stringent security checks, which add to the time passengers have to allow when travelling. Having jumped the hurdles to arrive air-side, there is of course always the possibility that your flight will have been delayed, leaving you with nothing but shopping to pass the time. The airport has a poor record on delayed departures, worse in fact than four out of five of the large European hub airports.

For passengers arriving at Heathrow, there is the endless circling for around 50% of all flights, as the planes are “stacked”, waiting for permission to land. When you finally reach the baggage re-claim, there is no guarantee that your luggage will appear. Add to this the confusing lay-out of the airport and the poor service and it is hardly surprising that many passengers will do anything to avoid the aptly named, “Heathrow Hassle”.

Sir Thomas Harris, vice chairman of Standard Chartered Capital Markets, told the Financial Times that there are many people who will travel via Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt, just to avoid the chaos of Heathrow. It is not just business travellers either who are shunning Heathrow. The increasing popularity of budget airlines means that many travellers are flying from the smaller regional airports, not only saving money but doing their blood pressure a favour too.

Heathrow was originally designed to cater for 40 to 45 million passengers per year, compared with the 67 million who use it now. You would be forgiven for thinking, therefore, that the answer to the nightmare may be the opening of Terminal 5 last month. Sadly this seems unlikely, with the removal of BA from Terminals 1 and 4 to the new Terminal 5 likely to cause a large-scale reshuffle of 54 airlines to different terminals.

BAA, part of the Spanish group, Ferrovial, responsible for airport operations, is said to be seeking up to two years’ grace in introducing improved services so that they have more time to fund and implement the new measures. According to one of BA’s general managers, Paul Ellis, BAA are, however, paying mere “lip service to customers’ needs” and will not take concrete steps to get their act together until “forced to do so by the regulators”. BAA refused to comment but are said to be in discussion with the Civil Aviation Authority, the economic regulator for Heathrow.

Ellis went on to explain that part of the CAA’s roles is to create an environment where a monopoly supplier is forced to act in a competitive way. BAA has been under pressure for several years to be broken up and an investigation by the Competition Commission last year was highly critical of BAA’s performance. Ellis feels that it is unacceptable that the public should suffer for another two years, just because BAA has failed to act in a competitive fashion.

The increase in air traffic in the UK, and in particular in the south east of the country, is a huge issue. By 2030 it is predicted that around 60% of all UK air passengers will be using the over-stretched airports in the south east of the country around the capital. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, City and Luton will soon be at breaking point and in desperate need of expansion. 120 million passengers a year walk through their doors, which is just under double the entire population of the UK. Tourists, businessmen and women, and people using the airports as a stop-off for longer flights, all add up to a huge requirement for a flawless service. This has been the government’s argument for expanding our airports as soon as possible.

The High Court has now passed the law to allow expansion of Stansted and Heathrow airports and work will begin on the former very soon. There have, however, been suggestions that the plans are unlawful and in breach of the European pollution limits that are being drawn up and will be properly imposed in 2010.

Many environmental groups have been set up to try to stop the expansions but they are finding the fight a tough one. The Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) group are not happy with the news that the building will take place on their doorstep by 2012. They, and others like them, will continue to fight their corner but it has now become a much tougher battle.

Stansted has been chosen as a preferred starting point to Heathrow because the pollution effects are very different. The principle sources of pollution are air and noise. At Heathrow it is likely that 30,000 people will be affected by the nitrogen dioxide air pollution whereas it’s only a mere 20 around Stansted. The noise levels are much higher at Stansted though (around 14,000 people will be affected) but again it’s considerably less than Heathrow.

The Transport Secretary at the time of the agreement in 2005, Douglas Alexander, has gone on record as saying that, “Aviation should meet its climate change costs and should limit noise and pollution”. But it feels as though this will be more easily said than done. The Aviation White Paper of 2003 proposed that the new runways at Stansted should begin by 2012 and then at Heathrow a few years after. Although Mr Alexander had one eye on the environmentalists, he was pretty committed to getting the job done and said, “We must ensure that the UK has the airport capacity it needs to enhance its economic performance."

Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, now has welcomed the new idea as much as her counterpart and was delighted to announce the plans for a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow to be operational by 2020. The expansion will cause the annihilation of an entire village near Heathrow. Residents of Sipson will see the bulldozers marching towards them in the next ten years and around 700 homes will be flattened to the ground. Apart from the obvious local critics, the government has faced opposition from within the House of Commons. The Lib Dem transport spokeswoman said, “At a time of climate change, with aviation having such a big impact, shouldn't we be completely rethinking this and putting that kind of investment into rail?" The ball has started rolling on this one though and it looks like a pretty hard one to stop.

With the new Terminal 5 at London Heathrow airport having cost in excess of £4 billion to build, BAA are leaving no stone unturned in their quest to make the terminal generate income, and what better way than from advertising revenue?

With 27 million passengers expected to use the terminal in the first year, many of whom are international business travellers, the new terminal is an advertiser’s dream come true. One advertising company estimates that almost a third of these travellers will be earning in excess of £50,000 a year – good news for advertisers.

The new terminal has more advertising space than any other airport in the world, with 333 billboards and posters and 206 flat screen televisions which will change adverts according to which flights are being targeted.

From the moment you step out of the car or off the train you will be bombarded with adverts, and J C Decaux, the advertising company, has paid staff to walk around the other terminals at the airport with video cameras, recording the routes that passengers take, to ensure that advertising is maximised once the new terminal opens.

Not content with shadowing passengers, they have also tested passengers’ heart rates. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stress associated with travel (particularly at Heathrow), elevates the heart rate from the norm of 70 beats per minute to around 90 which is more good news for advertisers as apparently this makes us more “receptive to messages”.

So far, J C Decaux has sold 65% of the available advertising space, with Visa snapping up the four sought after billboards overlooking the security lanes for £1.5 million a year. The average passenger using Terminal 5 will see between 50 and 120 adverts during their time at the airport.

Duncan Tolson, the director of media for BAA, has said that Terminal 5 will “mark the start of a new generation of airport advertising. It will act as a blueprint for the future and we are looking forward to rolling it out across all BAA airports.”

If fine art is more your thing than adverts, then worry not. You will have the opportunity of feasting your eyes on some specially commissioned pieces in the premium lounges, otherwise known as galleries, at the brand new Terminal 5.

BA has an eleven year old partnership with Artwise Curators and they have commissioned emerging British talent, in the art and design field, to produce eight new works for the £60 million suite of lounges. Amongst them will be 3D laser etchings by Christopher Pearson. The BA/Artwise partnership already has a collection of some 1500 pieces which will be showcased at regular intervals at the galleries.

More bad news for Heathrow emerged recently, when it was announced that Heathrow East, the new £1.5 billion terminal planned to play an important part in the 2012 London Olympics, is not likely to be ready in time.

BAA has admitted that the earliest date of completion is likely to be the end of 2012, six months after the Olympics open, but it could be as much as 15 months late. A spokesman for BAA said at a meeting that their ambition “always has been and still is, that Heathrow East will play a part in the opening of the Olympic Games”. He could not, however, give any assurances that the project would be finished on time.

The problems behind the delay appear to be both cost related and operational; in particular, problems have been thrown up in keeping the airport running whilst the work is carried out. An industry spokesman blames the fact that BAA underestimated the work involved and did not heed advice from airlines concerning the problems which were likely to arise.

Heathrow East, designed by Foster and Partners, is to replace the current Terminals 1 and 2, and is part of a ten year investment plan for Heathrow, costing over £6 billion. The official airport website describes the new terminal: “the design will deliver a bright spacious and modern environment, a terminal that is easy to use with clear way-finding and world-class facilities”. BAA wants the whole experience of travelling through the terminal to be exciting for passengers. It will not increase capacity or the number of flights and is intended solely to improve the environment and service for travellers.

Environmental sensitivities have also been addressed and the new terminal will reduce water consumption and increase waste recycling. Perhaps most importantly, it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 40% by a combination of energy saving elements in its design, as well as using biomass gasification and photovoltaic solar panels. It will be the first major project in London to use biomass gasification, the process by which gas is generated from waste wood and sustainable forests.

Heathrow airport has been the focus of heavy criticism recently, with congestion, delays and general chaos, coming under scrutiny. Now it seems that critics have yet more cause for complaint. Compulsory finger printing and photographic profiling has already started on a trial basis, in preparation for its introduction at the brand new Terminal 5. It will be used for all passengers flying to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle.

The reason given by the BAA for this controversial move, is the design of the new terminal’s departure lounge. There is no segregation between international and domestic passengers, leading to fears that, in theory at least, international passengers in transit at Heathrow could change boarding passes with a passenger on a domestic flight and enter the UK illegally. The fingerprinting and photographic profiling should ensure that the passenger who checked in is the same passenger boarding the plane.

Passengers will be fingerprinted and have their faces scanned when they go through the airport’s X-ray equipment and the details will then be available for cross-checking at the departures gate. Anyone refusing to co-operate will be denied access to their flight.

Civil liberties groups are unsurprisingly condemnatory of the move and have accused BAA of ushering in the scheme through the back door, with no public consultation or announcement. Those opposed to the introduction of ID cards are concerned that this scheme is being used by the government to “soften up” people in the run up to ID cards, by making them feel that fingerprinting is an acceptable part of everyday life.

Dr Gus Hosein from the London School of Economics is an expert in the relationship between civil liberties and technology and says “Britain is the first country in the democratic world to introduce this scheme as mandatory for flights within its borders. There would be a revolution if it happened in the US”.

The scheme, whilst attracting fierce opposition from many people, is within the law which governs data protection. A spokesman from the BAA has given assurances that the data is destroyed on a daily basis and that there is no possibility that it will fall into the hands of the police or any other authorities.

At Gatwick, which also has a common departures lounge for domestic and international travellers, photographs are already taken of passengers for security reasons. Later this year, travellers arriving at ten major American airports, including New York’s JFK, Chicago, Miami and Boston, will be obliged to provide prints of all ten fingers.

The director of the US-Visit Programme has tried to allay fears that the new system will cause unacceptable delays at Immigration. He has suggested that Europe is likely to follow suit in the future, although the Home Office has stated that there are currently no plans to fingerprint passengers arriving in the UK.