Virgin refusing to pay airport charges citing Gatwick disruption

Virgin Atlantic has said that it will not pay airport charges of as much as £100,000 as a way to cover its losses caused by the closure of Gatwick’s runway last week.

On 11 December, the airport’s operator, BAA, closed the single runway for several hours after failing to de-ice the runway during early morning hours in time for scheduled flight departures and arrivals.

Virgin has said that it intends to deduct the costs it incurred as a result of the disruption, estimating that the amount could be as much as £100,000.

The carrier was forced to delay a number of flights and also divert seven arriving flights to Stansted and Luton airports, meaning disruptions to thousands of its passengers.

Sir Richard Branson, the president of Virgin, commented: “It is highly incompetent for an airport operator to fail to predict the cold weather and not have de-icing fluid on standby.”

He added: “Thousands of our passengers were disrupted and, while our teams looked after customers and offered refunds and hotel rooms, our costs increased sharply as a result. BAA will have to pick up these costs as it created the problem in the first place.”

Other airlines were also affected by the runway closure and have indicated that they will take similar action to recover costs.

Thanks to www.travelmole.com for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.

www.virgin-atlantic.com