Bmi says that it will strongly resist any bid to delay Star Alliance”s long-anticipated move into London Heathrow”s Terminal 1.
The on-going catastrophic operational problems with British Airways (BA) disastrous first few days in its new home of Terminal 5 have engendered widespread speculation that BA may be forced to delay shifting many long-haul services from T3 and T4.
But speaking to ABTN today (1 April) in Istanbul on the occasion of Turkish Airlines” accession to Star Alliance, bmi CEO Nigel Turner firmly rebutted any idea of a potential time slip.
”The Star moves are taking place and we will resist very strongly any attempt to put that back ” this is a problem for the two companies BA and BAA,” he said.
”As they have been telling us that this is a temporary problem by definition it should not be a problem.”
Bmi”s concerns are just one facet of the enormous snowball effect caused by the severe problems with T5 that saw BA cancel hundreds of flights and stockpile a reported 28,000 bags.
United Airlines and Air New Zealand are due to arrive in T1 by 10 June as part of a complicated jigsaw arrangement that will also see fellow Star members Lufthansa, Swiss and TAP Portugal share the terminal in the ”under one roof” concept.
And Turner lost no time in underlining what he believed would be the passenger experience in a revamped T1, compared to the miserable start to T5”s existence.
”We have a T5 that cost ”4.3bn and which doesn”t work,” he said. ”There is a huge disparity between T1 and T5 - we carry bags and passengers on the same flight - it is not an option for us.”
Bmi is due to take over BA”s business class lounge as well as cooperate with alliance carriers in developing a new Star arrivals and departures lounge later in the year.
Turner revealed that he had ”empathy” with his beleaguered counterpart Willie Walsh and had contacted the BA boss to offer bmi capacity to stranded passengers, adding pithily ”we”ll sort out the bill later.”
The bmi chief executive also added that his airline was still considering a judicial review concerning the recent CAA decision to allow BAA the right to significantly increase fees, particularly at Heathrow and Gatwick.
”We are talking to the Department for Transport on a regular basis, but quite frankly we are not prepared to accept the level of landing fees,” he said.