Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
Heathrow Airport has a "abysmal" record of controlling building costs said the boss of British Airways-owner IAG.
This inevitably happens where you have a Regulator who sets the revenue (charges) in a form which takes the "costs" incurred into consideration. It then is in their interests to jack the costs up as high as possible - or more precisely, as high as the regulator will let them get away with. All sorts of extras get stuck into the price for which the operator can claim a rate of return on its "investment".
But Heathrow's chief executive John Holland-Kaye accused Mr Walsh of "a blatant attempt by Mr Walsh to maintain a dominant monopoly for BA at Heathrow and to frustrate the increased airline competition that should result from expansion".
Mr H-K is entitled to his opinion. But in saying this he has shot himself in the foot on charging the current airline operators a premium to start funding the expansion.