Hand baggage restrictions ‘to be lifted’ – UPDATED

Saturday, 02 Nov, 2007 0

Limits on the amount of hand luggage taken on flights are to be lifted soon, British Airways predicted today.

The airline revealed a 26% rise in pre-tax profits to a record £593 million for the half year to September.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh said: “More good news for our customers will be the removal of restrictions on hand-baggage which we expect soon.

“This will go a long way to relieving the hassle factor of the one bag limit.”

The airline continues to staff up to record levels and has improved its baggage performance despite a 15% increase in hold luggage.

BA said the weak dollar was helping reduce costs by £100 million over last year, while premium traffic remains strong.

Walsh, speaking to the BBC, said the cost of distribution had gone down through higher use of ba.com.

The airline revealed that further improvements to its online passenger carbon offset scheme will be announced in the coming weeks.

The airline is supporting moves for greater utilisation of the two runways at its Heathrow base, saying that the airport has no spare runway capacity – it operates on the same two runways it had when it opened 60 years ago.

“As a result the company is vulnerable to short-term operational disruption and there is little it can do to mitigate against this,” BA admitted.

The government is expected to announce shortly a public consultation on full utilisation of the two runways and on the construction of a short third runway.

“This would create extra capacity and reduce delays. Ending stacking before landing and queuing on taxiways would cut Heathrow’s CO2 emissions by 500,000 tonnes a year,” BA said.

“An increase in runway capacity would create more take-off and landing slots ad enable Heathrow to rival European hubs like Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.”

BA has set a target of improving aircraft fuel efficiency by a quarter by 2025 and aims to recycle half of its wastes and phase out the use of landfill by 2010.

In other environmental efforts, nearly half of BA aircraft now taxi to the airport terminal with one engine shut down.

by Phil Davies

Phil Davies

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