Disruption at T5 costs BA £16m

Disruption at Heathrow's new Terminal 5 has cost British Airways an estimated £16 million, the airline has announced.

The losses were incurred mainly due to the cancellation of around 300 short-haul flights, part of the chaos that has plagued the terminal's first week of operation.

British Airways has moved to reassure passengers claiming that a full schedule of flights would operate from the new £4.3 billion terminal on Saturday.

"Although there remains a small number of cancellations for today and tomorrow, the Terminal 5 performance is steadily improving," a statement said today.

Official figures show passenger traffic for the airline declined 2.8 per cent during March, with further disruption occurring in the first few days of April.

The British Airways statement said: "The impact was borne by the short-haul schedule, where there were 300 cancelled flights, equating to 0.2 percentage points of capacity.

"The financial impact of these events is estimated to be around 16 million pounds, reflecting all costs associated with the disruption and lost revenue opportunities."

Terminal 5 has had a disastrous opening with over 20,000 bags left stranded at Heathrow after passengers were made to board flights without their luggage.

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and large delays experienced at the British Airways terminal. A failure to get baggage-handlers to the terminal has been cited as the reason for the back-log of luggage, leading to widespread disruption.