Heathrow third runway will cost passengers £100 per flight, says BA

Telegraph

4 days ago

A third runway at Heathrow will add £100 to the cost of long-haul flights, boss of British Airways (BA) has warned.
Sean Doyle, BA's chief executive, said the £50bn expansion plan revealed by Heathrow on Thursday would require a doubling of landing fees to cover construction costs.
For long-haul flights, which attract the highest fees, that could take the charges facing passengers to more than £100, including the air passenger duty tax levied by the Government, the airline estimates.
Mr Doyle said: 'Heathrow is already the world's busiest airport, yet we're looking at costs doubling from where they are today. Why should that be the case?
'It's not just what passengers pay on their ticket but also the cost of every operator going in and out of Heathrow, regardless of landing fees.
'We're concerned about the competitiveness and the value of money that we're able to give customers.'
Airlines are worried that Heathrow has little incentive to deliver value for money with its expansion plans, with the costs set to be passed onto airlines and passengers in the form of higher landing fees.
Luis Gallego, the boss of BA parent International Airlines Group, said the jump in charges could prompt some passengers to fly via rival European hubs such as Paris and Amsterdam, damaging both Heathrow and BA in the process.
Mr Gallego said the level of spending required to deliver a third runway would be 'huge' regardless of whether the Government backed Heathrow's proposals or somewhat less costly plans pitched by hotel tycoon Surinder Arora.
He said: 'We are going to work with both parties to understand the proposals they have presented. But any model that finally is selected requires a change in the regulatory model.
'We need to compete with other hubs in Europe. If we want to increase the number of passengers at Heathrow we need to be competitive.
'If the growth is at any price it is not going to happen. There is a risk of building a runway that is going to be empty. What we want is to build something affordable to guarantee the growth of Heathrow and London.'
Mr Doyle said that the charging system was fundamentally flawed 'because the more you invest the more of a return is given to Heathrow, so it's not incentivising efficiency'.
Landing fees at Heathrow are already set to increase to £33.26 from 2027 based on the airport's plans for £10bn of short-term improvement works before the runway is built.
The Civil Aviation Authority, which has the final say over fees at Heathrow, has begun a review of the charging system with the runway proposals in wind.
The regulator said last month that the review would seek to protect the interests of consumers and that alternative regulatory models would be considered.
Virgin Atlantic, the biggest carrier at Heathrow after BA, said Heathrow was seeking to mask the full impact on fares of its plans by separating them into different capital programmes.
It claimed other major airports had delivered far cheaper capacity improvements, including Hong Kong, which it said had built three runways for little more than £14bn.
Operating profit at IAG jumped 43pc to €1.9bn (£1.65bn) in the six months through June, spurred by growth at BA. It said weakness in economy-class bookings in the US was largely offset by the continued strength of demand for premium travel.