Airports should have done better?

The boss of Easyjet Andy Harrison has blasted airports including Gatwick, Madrid and Milan for not preparing properly for the recent bad weather that grounded hundreds of flights at the beggining of the year.

Easyjet has annonuced a bill of around £16 million due to cancellations and having to put passengers up in airport hotels with Harrison blaming the airports saying "they should have done more" to ensure the airports remained operational.

However despite Easyjets losses of £16 million they are expected to announce profits of £165 million thanks to cutting their fuel bill by £100 million and raking cash via baggage charges and car hire.

British Airways In Easter Strike Fear

British Airways are again facing the prospect of a proposed strike of its cabin-crew over the Easter period, yesterday union bosses at Unite vowed to launch a new strike ballot after negotiations had failed over work patterns and job cuts.

Unite will send out 13,000 ballot papers to its members next week with the earliest strike date being 1st March which would cause chaos for BA in the run up to the Easter Holidays.

The proposed 12 day strike over christmas would have gone ahead had it not been overuled by the High Court stating that the original ballot was void as it had votes from members who had the left the union.

A Unite national officer has said it is still commited to finding a solution with BA but warned workers are very angry and the threat of a proposed strike is very real.

More Snow Brings More Delays At The Airports

Fresh snowfalls overnight have brought more disruptions to Uk travellers and airports with the South and South West being the worst affeceted, runways at Gatwick, London City, Birmingham International, Southampton and Cardiff airports have been suspended after a morning of heavy snowfall with Gatwick due to re-open at 15.00 today, after earlier cancelling 34 flights.

Heathrow Airport has reported the cancellation of 84 mostly short-haul or domestic flights. Luton has also cancelled a total of 15 flights. Budget airline EasyJet said it had cancelled more than 70 flights, from airports including Gatwick, Bristol, Belfast, Newcastle and Luton.

British Airways has warned of more flight disruption being on the cards as the Uk trys to deal with some of the worst snowfall seen in 20 years.

BAA Airport Traffic drops 4.2% in 2009

BAA has reported that Passenger traffic at its major airports dropped by 4.2% in 2009, in what has been described as a difficult year by the airport operator, although an improvement has been seen towards the last quarter.

At Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, passenger numbers fell by 1.5%, to 65.9 million. Glasgow airport recorded 7.2 million passengers in 2009, a 11.3% drop in passenger traffic.

In all, BAA's six airports saw 106.9 million passengers come through its terminals in 2009. That number doesn't include passengers passing using Gatwick airport, which was recently sold to a U.S.-based private investment fund, the operator said.

"2009 was a difficult year for our airline customers," BAA chief executive Colin Matthews said in a statement. "Towards the end of the year we saw signs of improvements, particularly at Heathrow, but there are more challenging times ahead in 2010."

BAA stated the drop in traffic slowed 1.2% in the last quarter, but extremely bad weather in the U.K. and the rest of Europe in December led to many disruptions and had made an impact. BAA said the bad weather had cost them 150,000 lost passengers in cancellations and passengers deciding not to travel.

Snow cause chaos across UK

Snowfall across the UK has caused chaos for commuters and travellers alike with over 2000 schools shut due to the extended cold weather, the likes of which hasnt been seen for almost 30 years.

The snow started in the North yesterday causing havoc at Manchester airport, which suspended all flights yesterday and is still suffering disruptions this morning.

Overnight the snow has drifted south and is now hampering the operations of Gatwick airport which has suspended all flights coming in and out, also Heathrow is experiencing major delays.

The cold weather is expected to hang around till the end of the week, passengers who are due to fly from the affected airports are being advised to check with their airline before travelling.

List of affected major airports

Gatwick - Flights suspended

Heathrow - Delays

Luton - Delays

Liverpool - Delays

Manchester - Delays

Birmingham - Delays

Southhampton - Delays

Bristol - Flights suspended

Cardiff - Flights suspended

Last update 06/01/10

BAA Wins appeal against monopoly order

BAA has won its appeal against an order to sell three of the seven UK airports it owns on the basis that the ruling panel was affected by "apparent bias".

But the appeal tribunal refused to accept that BAA's argument that it was being forced to sell the airports too quickly. The Competition Commission had ruled in March that BAA must sell Gatwick, Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow airports within two years. Gatwick airport which BAA sold towards the end of last year will not be included in the judgement.

It is still unclear whether BAA will have be forced to sell the other airports in the original timescale. The Competition Appeal Tribunal stated they would allow more time to for both sides to voice their opinons as to what should happen next.

BAA said it was pleased they had won the appeal on the grounds of apparent bias and said further talks should now take place with the Competition Commission as the tribunal suggested.

A spokesman for the commission said it was reviewing the ruling and was planning to make further submissions to the tribunal, adding that the judge had made the ruling with "the greatest reluctance".