Snow chaos at Heathrow before Christmas, strikes and volcanic ash contributed to a £317 million annual loss by airports operator BAA.
The pre-tax, unadjusted figure is a 61% improvement on 2009’s loss of £822 million, which included losses from its forced sale of Gatwick and a £218 million charge for its pension deficit.
Overall passenger numbers were down by 1.8% last year to 84.3 million as the business was hit by the triple impact of the Icelandic ash cloud, British Airways cabin crew strikes and the severe weather.
Passengers using Heathrow were down by 200,000 to 65.7 million from 65.9 million in 2009, while those using Stansted dropped by 7% to 18.6 million. However, adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and exceptional items improved by 9.2% to £966.9 million as revenue grew by 4.9% to £2.074 billion.
The figures were released ahead of a BBC radio interview with chief executive Colin Matthews who apologised for the deficiencies in the way the company dealt with the bad weather. The closure of both runways at Heathrow wrecked the holidays and business trips of hundreds of thousands of people and left airlines incensed.
“I felt terrible about the situation that passengers were in,” Matthews said. “In retrospect we should have been prepared for more. We must prepare for intense snow in the future.”
Releasing the results for the year to December 31, Matthews said: “We delivered a robust financial performance in 2010 despite the volcanic ash, strikes and snow that affected major airports across Europe and North America.
“Strong passenger growth at Heathrow in the second half of the year reflected the ongoing improvement in the global economic climate. We continued to strengthen and diversify our funding position by raising £2 billion of new financing, underpinning our investment in upgrading Heathrow.”