BAA: brother, can you spare a dime?

By Richard on 10/05/2008
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Brother, can you spare a dime

As anyone who watches daytime TV will know, debt refinancing is big business. There are millions of companies out there who will loan you money to pay off your existing debts, hiking up the interest rate as they go. Normally it's cash-strapped homeowners with their lives in hock who these loan sharks target, but now it's BAA's turn to suffer as it tries to persuade someone to lend it lots and lots of money.

Financial pundits from investment houses and other rarefied places speculate as to whether the owner of 7 of the UK's airports has any chance of sorting out its debts. Ferrovial took on £10 billion worth of debt to buy BAA last year, and now those money turkeys are coming home to roost. Going cap in hand to its shareholders raised £500 million (far more than Plane Stupid could raise, I assure you!) but even that can't save the ailing company. Now hacks are speculating that if BAA cannot sort its finances out in the next two months, bondholders will be able to take their £3 billion investment back, potentially bankrupting the company.

Amusingly the credit crunch is now being blamed for BAA's problems. Seems there's nothing we can't blame on those irresponsible sub-prime lenders, eh?

Archbishop of Canterbury backs Make a NOise! demo

By Richard on 08/05/2008
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Rowan doll

At the end of this month thousands of people are gathering at Hatton Cross to oppose the third runway and airport expansion. We'll be there of course, but the marchers might have a very special guest: rumour has it that God will be joining them.

OK, so maybe that's an exaggeration: God may or may not be there (it is, admittedly, hard to tell), but the Archbishop of Canterbury has given his backing for the demonstration, sending a letter of support to be read out during the rally. The Archbishop's spokesman told the Evening Standard: "He acknowledges the strength of support (against a third runway). He is aware of the problems encountered by churches on the ground across London. He is trying not to fly if he can help it. He has not flown at all this year."

As Bob Dylan explained back in 1964, having God on your side does make things a bit easier. Flippancy aside, the coalition of the unlikely is growing stronger and broader every day. Even the Evening Standard, voice of conservative capitalism, has switched sides, with a recent editorial opposing expansion. Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Transport, is well known as to be deeply religious. Will the Archbishop's support for the campaign sway her?

Snowdonia National Park - the perfect place for an airport?

By Richard on 08/05/2008
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Snowdonia

National Parks - the last refuge from the roar and crunch of mechanised civilisation. Where packs of ramblers roam free over the heathered hills, and ne'er an engine is heard. Unless, of course, you're talking about Snowdonia National Park, where the Welsh Assembly Government have decided to develop a private airport.

Llanbedr airport was built in 1938 and until recently was a military airbase, but was sold off in 2006 to Kemble, who already run a private airfield in the Cotswolds. Because of planning loopholes, the airport can begin operations without public enquiry or scrutiny - despite the impact on the National Park and the climate.

Ex-BA boss slams third runway

By Richard on 07/05/2008
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Project Runway

Take one former chief executive of British Airways. Add a hefty dose of criticism, blend with the Sunday Times's campaigning and leave to simmer over a Bank Holiday weekend. What have you got? Another nail in the coffin for the surely doomed third runway.

Bob Ayling, head of BA from 1996 - 2000, has joined the baying mob opposed to Heathrow's expansion, calling the plans to turn Sipson into Airstrip One a "a classic exercise in misguided central planning." While environmentalists have focused on the growth in emissions and residents on intolerable noise and pollution, Ayling has gone straight for the economic jugular, savaging BA and BAA's business plan and the regulatory framework.

BA passenger numbers collapse

By Chris on 06/05/2008
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BA check in

It hasn't been a good start to the year for British Airways, once the self-appointed "World's Favourite Airline". Surging growth on the domestic railways and a 21 per cent increase on Eurostar following the opening of the high speed route has eroded BA's passenger figures. Now even their pilots are trying to strike.

But the real disaster was of course the 'opening' of T5 with the naive belief that passengers might still want to travel with BA even if one in 34 of the bags that were reluctantly submitted to their care were lost in the bowels of the new terminal. Oddly enough people are deserting the British flagship in droves: BA's figures fell 7.9% in April 2008 compared with a year previously. What's more the number of passengers per plane has been falling - by 5.1 % over the year - undermining the industry's pretend 'efficiency' figures, which rely on cramming more and more people into aircraft to reduce their per passenger emissions.

Could this be why they've taken to plastering London with surreal adverts which show famous landmarks dominated by aircraft apparatus  - including Big Ben transformed into a control tower. Is BA so crazy that they haven't spotted that this is just like waving a red flag in front of the hordes of residents who'd happily trade BA's bankruptcy for a decent night's sleep without the red-eye from Dallas soaring overhead...

More planes = more emissions, part 2

By Richard on 02/05/2008
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Plane below

The aviation industry loves to crow about its efficiency gains while steadily increasing the number of planes in the sky. They call this sustainable aviation and pretend that it's tackling their emissions. We're sceptical, and according to Australian scientists at the Centre for Climate Law and Policy, we are right: any efficiency gains are being outpaced by the increase in planes and flights.

According to the Centre's Associate Director, Andrew Macintosh, "at the moment the gains [the aviation industry's] making through technological advances and improvements in the way they operate the aircraft are being offset by the massive increase in the size of the market." In other words, small gains in efficiency are wiped out by everyone flying more, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone with half a brain.

Macintosh also expressed doubt that the industry could keep growing without massively increasing its emmissions and that this would make it almost impossible to hit climate change targets. This echoes the concerns raised by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research who found that if aviation continued to grow, it would not only wipe out its own efficiency gains, but could end up accounting for our entire CO2 allowance under the Kyoto Protocol. Sustainable growth, eh?