Airline passenger news and views

Heathrow has published a Winter Resilience Programme Update detailing the progress being made in the works to ensure the airport is better prepared for extreme winter weather.

Last winter's heavy snow chaos is still fresh in our memory: Heathrow had to close for four days in the run up to Christmas, which costed BAA - Britain's biggest airports operator - £24m, and caused a 10.9 percent drop in passenger numbers for the month of December.

The results of an enquiry on how BAA, working with the airline community, NATS and the CAA, could increase Heathrow's resilience to disruption in order to improve passengers' experience of the airport, were published six months ago.

Heathrow has now detailed the work undertaken so far following the recommendations made by the enquiry, for which implementation they have committed to invest £32.4 million.

According to BAA this is what they have done so far to follow the programme:

• Tripled the number of vehicles available for snow clearance compared to December 2010, with a total fleet of 185 vehicles.

• Increased the total number of staff available for snow clearance from 117 to 468 per shift.

• Introduced a new 'Reservist' role which will see up to 950 non-operational staff deployed to terminals to help passengers during disruption.

• Agreed with airlines, NATS and ACL (the company responsible for allocating slots at Heathrow) a new process for managing the necessary flight cancellations during disruption so that passengers receive more timely and accurate information about whether their flight is operating.

• Initiated plans for a new airport control centre.

• Improved the support and information we provide to passengers during disruption.

"The work achieved so far will help us to serve passengers better at Heathrow on days when there isn't snow just as much as on those rare occasions when there is," said Philip Langsdale, CIO and Winter Resilience Programme Director.

BAA was heavily criticised for its poor performance in Heathrow during last winter's extreme weather conditions. Airlines claimed that the airport failed to buy sufficient de-icing fluid to keep its runways open and even Colin Matthews, BAA's chief executive, admitted that Heathrow was not adequately prepared for the bad weather.

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