BA set to move into Heathrow's Terminal 5

Dubai: New aircraft, premium cabins and a new home at Heathrow International Airport hold the key to future success for British Airways, its UAE manager said.

In March the airline will pull the curtains back on Terminal 5, the new exclusive home of British Airways at London Heathrow, which will be used for passengers coming from the Middle East.

"We've moving into a new home at Heathrow and we are confident that is enough for us to remain at the forefront," Paul Starrs, country manager for BA in Dubai, told Gulf News recently.

The new facilities will follow several other announcements by the world's third largest airline by international traffic.

In October, BA announced a new Club World premium class product with lie-flat seats and other amenities that is part of a $200 million premium class facelift. BA, which carried 29.5 million international passengers last year, is offering more storage and a 25 per cent larger seat for premium travellers.

Huge investment

A month earlier the airline also said it would invest $8.2 billion in a re-fleeting programme to add 12 Airbus A380s and 24 Boeing 787 Dreamliners in its largest plane order in nine years.

Speculation has grown on how the growth of long-haul carriers in the Middle East would affect the established carriers operating out of Europe.

While Gulf airlines had made inroads into the US market, it would take time before they offer a serious challenge to BA's network of 28 US destinations out of Heathrow, he said.

"We already have a network that broadly covers most of the key gateways in the US. Our products in premium to North America are very, very strong and will continue to be very strong."