Thomas Woldbye, the Dane now charting Heathrow’s future

Thomas Woldbye says Heathrow shares just one feature with the Copenhagen airport he ran for 12 years. “What’s different to Copenhagen? Well, apart from the fact we have aircraft landing and taking off, then I think almost everything,” the man who took over as CE of Europe’s largest airport in October said. Running Heathrow has long been a high-pressure job, but Woldbye has succeeded long-standing boss John Holland-Kaye just as Heathrow faces its biggest change in ownership since the airport was privatised in the 1980s. The 59-year-old Dane will also have to make a decision on the politically explosive question of whether to build a third runway at an airport that expects a record 81.4mn passengers to travel through it this year. In November, Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial, which bought Heathrow in 2006, announced it would sell its remaining 25% stake to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and French buyout group Ardian for GBP2.4b. The news broke hours after Woldbye stepped off a Virgin Atlantic flight between London and New York, the first transatlantic journey powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuels. As he mingled with Sir Richard Branson and UK government officials at a glitzy party that evening, the ramifications of Ferrovial’s decision became clear. Thanks to a complicated ownership structure, the Spanish group’s exit set off a rush among the airport’s shareholders to sell their stakes, leaving 60% of the airport up for grabs. Building a business that is “attractive” to shareholders will be one of his priorities, said Woldbye, but insisted that the potential ownership changes have not been a distraction. “To be honest it is not something we as management spend much time on right now; it is a question for shareholders,” he said.<br/>