A full week after British police said they foiled an alleged terrorist plot to blow up planes bound for America, London Heathrow was yesterday (Wednesday) still badly disrupted.
BA, whose hub is at what is the world's busiest airport, was forced to cancel up to 10% of its flights.
Further cancellations are expected today (Thursday) but the airline said it planned to return to a full schedule on Friday.
The carrier, whose losses for the week run into many millions, was reported to be considering legal action against BAA which runs Heathrow and six other UK airports.
It cancelled, with other airlines, most of its flights from Heathrow on Thursday, the first day of the emergency when police uncovered an alleged plot to take liquid explosives on board up to ten airlines bound for America.
The UK and US governments quickly enforced bans on all but the most essential of hand baggage.
By Saturday BA was operating about 50% of it services from the airport and passengers were experiencing long delays because of the security measure.
Willie Walsh, the airline's ceo, hit out then at BAA's handling of the crisis. He said: "BAA is unable to provide a robust security search process and baggage operation at London Heathrow and as a result we are being forced to cancel flights and operate some others from Heathrow without all the passengers onboard.
"The airport's baggage system cannot process all of the passengers' bags and where passengers have been able to check their bags in, the lengthy queues in the airport security search area means that passengers are unable to get to the departure gate in time for their flight."
Hand baggage restrictions were eased on Tuesday but BAA admitted it had too few staff to operate the new security regime.
But others praised the fact that airports and airlines managed to keep flying during the disruption.
Greeley Koch, president of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) who was checking in at Heathrow when the emergency started, said: "The most remarkable aspect of the events of August 10, 2006 is that government and industry met an alleged full-fledged terrorist threat and were able to take the appropriate measures without fully shutting down the system.
"Not only did this show who was in charge of situation, but this minimised the impact of a vast potential economic threat to the travel industry."
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