terminal velocity

摘要

It's been a tumultuous decade for British Airways(BA) and the British Airport Authority's (BAA) Heathrow airport. With the combined body blows of budget airlines and the 9/11 attacks, both briefly saw profits and public opinion declining. Then, after passenger numbers soared and reporting a gross profit of pound124m at the beginning of 2005, staff strikes meant that BA struggled to help thousands of passengers stranded at Heathrow. Heathrow was originally designed to serve around 45 million passengers, yet today the world's busiest airport has to capacitate for the 70 million who pass through it each year.