A row has erupted between Heathrow airport and BA over the plans to hand airlines a GBP500m bill relating to the airport’s controversial third runway. A regulatory consultation recommends allowing Heathrow to charge carriers for expansion costs incurred until February this year. Judges blocked Heathrow’s controversial GBP14b expansion seven months ago over climate change concerns – but not before the airport spent hundreds of millions of pounds in preparation. Regulations allow Heathrow, which is owned by a consortium led by Spain’s Ferrovial and the Qatar state, to increase charges in line with costs incurred. Willie Walsh, the outgoing boss of IAG, the FTSE 100 group that owns BA, has repeatedly clashed with Heathrow over the framework, which he has said encourages the airport to “spend recklessly”. A spokesman for IAG said: “In any other business, a wealthy, privately owned company like Heathrow Ltd would have to meet its own sunk costs. But Heathrow is a monopoly that will simply pass the bill to the airlines, further damaging UK aviation as it struggles to survive the Covid crisis. The regulator must step in.” A spokesman for Heathrow said: “The CAA established an approach to expansion-related costs some time ago – with that approach approved and agreed by airlines, including IAG. We believe this approach should remain.” CAA director Richard Stephenson said it was reviewing responses to the consultation and had yet to make a decision.<br/>
oneworld
Willie Walsh is not quite enjoying the retirement he had planned. When his departure was announced in January, he had just led BA owner IAG to a E2.3b pre-tax profit for 2019, its share price was moving back towards all-time highs, and as one of the FTSE 100’s longest-serving CEs, he was preparing to step down in March. Fast-forward eight months and the world looks very different. After pushing back his leave date when the severity of Covid-19 became clear, Walsh will finally hand over the controls at IAG’s delayed annual meeting on Tuesday, at a time when the airline industry appears permanently changed by the pandemic and BA is flying only a fifth of its pre-crisis schedule. Instead of churning out profits, IAG made a E4.2b loss in H1 2020, and Walsh himself will leave under the cloud of a potential shareholder revolt about his big pay packet at a time when the company is laying off thousands. Walsh is a rare thing in the airline industry: a former pilot who made it to the top of the boardroom. Starting at Aer Lingus before moving to British Airways in 2005, Walsh engineered BA’s 2011 merger with Spain’s Iberia to create a new, unorthodox group with separate management teams but shared costs in some central services. Investors at Tuesday’s meeting, to be held in Madrid, will have the chance to give Walsh a final bloody nose before his departure: the influential adviser Institutional Shareholder Services is urging investors to reject a GBP883,000 bonus to be awarded to the CE for 2019 in a non-binding vote on its pay report. Several major investors are said to have indicated that they will vote against the report.<br/>
American Airlines Group introduced its cheapest fare class in 2017 to coax a few travellers away from budget carriers. These days, such no-frills tickets are becoming a mainstay of the company’s efforts to fill its planes. As many as 85% of passengers bought so-called Basic Economy fares during a brief uptick in travel in June, Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja said. The vast majority were under 30, and two-thirds weren’t enrolled in American’s loyalty program -- indicating they probably weren’t repeat travelers. Since then, such bare-bones tickets have continued to account for a majority of customers. The rare pocket of demand offers a modest lifeline as airlines grasp for ways to soften a travel collapse caused by the coronavirus pandemic. With budget-conscious younger customers more willing to fly than the business travelers American has traditionally targeted, the airline is sweetening its lowest-end offerings and trying to use them as a way to jump-start sales. “We envision Basic Economy as being much different than what we designed it as,” Raja said. “We anticipate using it quite directly as a means of getting customers who really weren’t travelers before to come to market, as an entry product into the airline, to the travel experience.”<br/>
A passenger reportedly left an offensive note for a flight attendant after being asked to wear their mask over their nose. Handwritten on an inflight sick bag, the note calls the member of American Airlines cabin crew a “mask nazi” and a “glorified maid”. A photo of the note was shared on social media by Twitter user @hibiscuslacroix, who captioned the picture: “Today a passenger handed this to a flight attendant upon deplaning. The flight attendant had asked her to wear her mask over her nose. Incredibly done with the general public.” The woman’s note read: “Nobody cares about your stupid seat policies or your nose issues. We pay your salary and your attitude is unnecessary. The very fact that we have to listen and kowtow to a nobody who does s*** except collect our trash and serve crappy food makes me absolutely ill.” The passenger added: “If it wasn’t for this job, you would be cleaning motel rooms for $2 tips and meth. I made sure to write this on a bag labelled as to what I think your life actually is… A WASTE.” The airline said it was “looking into” the matter.<br/>