Emergency! Anyone know how to run an airport? >> .:thebusinessonline.com:.

Emergency! Anyone know how to run an airport? >> .:thebusinessonline.com:.: Emergency! Anyone know how to run an airport?
By Ian Watson
20 August 2006


HEATHROW, Gatwick and other UK airports collapse into collective seizure. Thousands of passengers huddle in marquees for hour after hour. 20,000 items of luggage go missing. Hundreds of flights are cancelled. Some that manage to take to the air depart almost empty with their passengers left behind in queues waiting to clear security. Checked-in luggage is wheeled across a non-secure area of Gatwick. The queues, the flight cancellations continue 10 days after the terrorist flap first erupted.

What a picture to show the outside world of Britain in 2006.

Why, though, are British companies so incompetent when dealing with emergencies? The airlines blame airport operator BAA, now owned by Spanish concern Ferrovial, for the massive disruption to their schedules. BAA says “don’t blame us” and wants troops brought in to help with the new security rules. The government says no, and tells BAA to get its act together.

BAA must have known – or should have known – what the highest level of security alert would involve if ever enacted. It should have been ready with plans to meet the emergency. It was not. Neither were the airlines. As usual it was policy on the hoof.

British companies seem to grind to a halt at the first sign of crisis. Their highly paid executives freeze like rabbits caught in headlights. Two months after last summer’s strike ended at GateGourmet, which supplies British Airways with inflight catering, there was still no food for passengers on many BA flights. That incident exposed that BA had no back-up plan. One wonders what, if anything, the risk assessment officers in companies prone to strikes or other emergencies actually do.

In the weeks before the current terrorist alert, it was apparent to every airline passenger that Britain’s airports were woefully undermanned at every point from check-in to security and baggage handling. Even last week, at 1400 hours at Aberdeen airport, five days into the alert, there was only one BA employee checking in passengers. Yet there was BA’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, on the TV news blaming BAA for all the ills.


To every queuing passenger it has been blindingly obvious that BAA and the major airlines were understaffed even to cope with the expected traffic during the busiest holiday period of the year, never mind in the event of a security emergency. Tell-tale rope barriers, and winding queues of frustrated passengers, were testament to that. What was done to ease the holiday congestion? Nothing.

It was obvious too that John Reid, the Home Secretary, had gone into spinning mode when praising the travelling public for their forbearance and lack of complaints. A minute spent inside the marquees housing the massive passenger overspill at Heathrow would have quickly dispelled Reid of that notion.

Incredibly BAA claimed it was not its fault that such tough security measures were suddenly imposed. Hold on. Five years have passed since 9/11 and nothing that could not have been anticipated since then has been sprung on BAA or the airlines. Their executives must have been aware that one day a security alert on this scale would occur.

It’s also been apparent for some time that the UK’s main airports were at risk of going into meltdown should a terrorist attack – real or imagined – take place. Apparently not to BAA. Just a few months ago it stated, as part of its defence against Ferrovial’s takeover, that it was planning major cost efficiencies and some 700 job losses.

The crisis has illustrated the lack of effective contingency planning by those at the top of BAA and major airlines like BA. With breathtaking cheek the airlines are now demanding £250m in compensation from the government – yes that’s taxpayers’ money – for their own shortcomings.

It’s not hard to identify a prime contributor to the chaos. In a major article published during Ferrovial’s takeover battle for BAA, The Business highlighted that BAA had become more of a retailer than an airport operator. We revealed that BAA now made more money from its airports shops and from car parking fees than it did from aircraft landing charges and other airport services.
Years ago BAA realised that you don’t make any money from staff searching bags and lugging baggage around. The threat now is that Ferrovial, the new owner of our major airports, might make cuts in BAA’s investment programme. It borrowed almost £8bn to buy BAA and is already said to be reviewing BAA’s £9.5bn expenditure to upgrade London’s airports. It is also pushing for even more shops, bars and cafes to rake in money from passengers experiencing “dwell time” caused by flight delays.

For years BAA has successfully resisted calls from the airlines that it should be broken up, though whether that is a solution is unclear. What is clear is that, prior to the latest terrorist alert, capacity at Heathrow was already stretched to breaking point. The crisis has demonstrated the need for Heathrow’s new Terminal 5.

It wasn’t all bad news, though, for the legions of fed-up travellers at Heathrow and Gatwick. John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, chose to visit the tiny Humberside and Doncaster airports to see how they were coping with the crisis. They were doing OK – until he showed up.