Heathrow: So Much Press, None Good

Posted by: Justin Bachman on March 31

“Holy Cow!” as Harry Caray would have said. Talk about a catastrophic coincidence for British Airways: the complete collapse of all positive press and passenger enthusiasm over its new Heathrow Terminal 5 just as other airlines debut flights there – minus the baggage difficulties besetting BA. It’s rare one sees “We’re sorry” stamped prominently on the home page of any airline.

On Apr. 1, the airline turned to FedEx to help reunite passengers with a mountain of some 20,000 bags, Bloomberg reported, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also apologized for the mess.

The PR wires have been crackling the past few days as airlines tout their new flights into Heathrow. Air France-KLM, Delta, United, and Continental are among the carriers making a big splash about new service into London’s primary international airport. LHR, here we come! It’s been such a bullish stampede into the airport I feel like any day now I’ll see a press release heralding a new nonstop to Heathrow from Fort Wayne.

But back to BA. No one seems to have yet called for the head of CEO Willie Walsh, but as the ill will grows and the financial toll to the company becomes more apparent, one can expect to see a slew of stories with that terribly familiar “Can He Survive?” tenor.

Thus far, estimates of the costs vary from $50 million to $100 million, with government officials stepping gingerly into the mess Mar. 31 to warn that BA must do right by its customers. BA’s stock rallied on Tuesday, but remains off around 20% this year. The airline expects to cancel 50 flights both Apr. 1 and 2, a testament to what a thorny problem this new system is proving. And the company says this terminal was tested extensively? Amazing, if true. Chaos, Heathrow and British Airways have become a trio of synonyms in recent days, and business travelers may well begin sampling the competition – even if just to avoid an unfortunate divorce from their clothes. Do BA’s travails at Heathrow help or hurt the various new entrants there? Is anyone leery of the place?

All of this turmoil comes less than a year after BA was badly bruised by a spate of stories last year about wretched luggage-handling performance at Heathrow, particularly during the summer travel crush. The airline lost the bags of more than 550,000 travelers during the first half of 2007, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ironically, that same Aug. 21 column predicted that T5 would ease the airline’s difficulties in minding its customers’ suitcases.