The next few years will be immensely challenging for the airline industry. Like our competitors we will have to respond to sharply rising infrastructure and fuel costs, changes in regulation, fierce competition, possible restructuring of our industry and significant environmental challenges. We must contend with these while striving to meet the relentlessly high expectations of our customers.
Thanks to a great deal of hard work in recent years the fundamentals of our business are vastly improved. So we will meet these challenges from a position of financial strength that few other carriers enjoy. Once Terminal 5 is fully running, as it can and should, we will have the tools to transform the travelling experience of our customers.
Terminal 5 – a new start
I want to put on record again my deep regret for the inconvenience and frustrations we caused to customers in the days after Terminal 5 opened.
Our people have worked tirelessly to put things right and, thanks to this ongoing effort, customers will begin to see this tremendous new facility in its true light.
The first phase of the move of additional flights into Terminal 5 will take place on June 5. The services to be switched include flights to and from New York JFK. The other seven destinations are Abuja, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Cape Town, Lagos and Phoenix. All these flights currently operate from Terminal 4 and combined they amount to about a quarter of the airline’s Terminal 4 schedule.
We will switch further flights from Terminal 4 when we have full confidence that good standards of service will be maintained, with the terminal handling larger volumes of customers and bags.
BA038 incident
Another incident which attracted intense media focus was the BA038 which landed short of the runway on its approach to Heathrow in January.
There were 136 customers on board, 13 members of cabin crew and three pilots. Thanks to the heroism and skill of the flight crew, the Boeing 777 aircraft landed safely and the excellent work of the cabin crew ensured that all our customers were evacuated on the Captain’s command with only a few injuries sustained.
An incident of this kind is something we hope will never happen but this is why we place so much emphasis on safety. We focus a great deal of importance on the quality and standard of our training. Our flight and cabin crew have shown the value of their training and skills and were able to deal with the incident professionally, effectively and safely.
All the crew did a magnificent job supported by our frontline staff from engineering to call centre staff and volunteers to care for the passengers and keep our operations going.
I am very proud of them, and from the emails and letters that I received after this incident, I know many people around the world share this view. The Air Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) continues to investigate what caused the incident.
12 Airbus A380 on order, with options on a further seven.