We finally secured approval this week for an immunised deal with our alliance partners American Airlines and Iberia. It has been a long time coming. The final step was to secure approval from the US Department of Transport, which was granted last Tuesday evening, fourteen years after we first attempted to get a deal approved [...]
Last week was a busy one. On Sunday, I flew out to Mexico for a oneworld meeting and to welcome Mexicana into the alliance. I flew back via Madrid and arrived back in London just as the merger agreement between BA and Iberia was announced. It’s taken a long time to get there, but fantastic [...]
I was at London City airport this morning to see off the first BA flight to New York. It took me over an hour and a half to get there from my office near Heathrow. Which is the point really – if you live or work on the east side of London, that’s how much [...]
Another set of flights moved across to terminal 5 this week, the biggest move since the first day. All went smoothly. The same cannot be said for the financial markets last week. ‘A week is a long time in politics’, they say. Nowadays a week is a long time, period.
We switched a further 15 longhaul flights to T5 today – the first since the less than successful opening day. The media were on hand to write the “more chaos at T5 story” but left disappointed. It was a fabulous day for the airline and more importantly for our customers. The terminal and our operation [...]
Day three and things are going a little better with T5, but still extremely ‘fragile’. Here is a photo I took on the first morning, before any problems emerged. It is still such a wonderful terminal, I just hope the systems start working more reliably soon.
Well, only a few hours to go before T5 is finally open for business. The first flight scheduled to arrive in T5 left Hong Kong 4 minutes early, so we’re off to a good start. I’m away to bed, since I need to get up at 3:15am (!) tomorrow. An exciting day ahead.
A day which started high and ended low. I’m dog-tired and going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
