Those people at Heathrow who want to build another runway because their airport is full are not kidding. While every other leading British airport has been reporting a bumper summer season, Heathrow squeezed in another 0.1 per cent passengers in August, up to 75 million in the past year. Air traffic movements at the west London hub are stuck at flat.
This is not good news for the airline group called International Consolidated Airlines Group or IAG, which in all but name is British Airways with a little bit of extra earnings (sometimes) from its Spanish and Irish carriers.
BA is Heathrow’s dominant airline and plainly has nowhere there to grow. Set this against a UK aviation market expected to mirror falling GDP economic activity.