http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=411579 <http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=411579&in_page _id=2> &in_page_id=2
Airlines face huge terror bill Robert Lea, Evening Standard 10 August 2006 BRITAIN'S major airlines face a bill potentially running into tens of millions of pounds after today's 'critical' security alert meant London's major airports all but gave up trying to put passengers on domestic and European flights. British Airways cancelled its short-haul flight schedule from Heathrow en masse and another 40 scratched services at Gatwick took the total number of BA cancellations to more than 400. An unquantified number of intercontinental flights are also being cancelled, with disruption on services to New York and Heathrow. Hundreds more flights were cancelled by easyJet as it scrapped its entire flight schedule for the day from Gatwick, Stansted and Luton. Ryanair said it had cancelled over 50 flights but admitted many more are suffering delays of more than five hours. A spokesman for BA declined to put a price on the cost of the disruption. 'It's too early to tell. We are concentrating simply on the operation at present,' he said. However, analysts are already drawing comparisons with last August's Gate Gourmet catering staff strike which saw 900 BA flights cancelled, stranding 100,000 passengers. This will ultimately cost the airline £45m. The costs of today's airport and flights disruption - which are likely to have a knock-on effect over several days - will force the airlines to pay out refunds and compensation to many passengers. BA shares dived 6%, down 22p to 368p, the biggest faller in the FTSE 100 and wiping £260m off the value of the flag-carrier. Another £200m was wiped off the value of Ryanair, as shares in the Stansted-based airline plunged 5%. Shares in easyJet were off 3%. While the rest of the stock market attempted to shrug off the heightened fears of renewed terrorist attacks on London, shares in other travel and holiday companies were under pressure. Biggest victim among London's top 350 stocks was Avis Europe, the car hire company which is based at most major airports. Its shares crashed by 8%, shedding 5¼lp to 61¾lp. InterContinental Hotels, heavily reliant on the holiday and leisure market, also took a sharp tumble, off 30½l;p at 835p. Another big loser was MyTravel, the holiday company that runs its own charter airline. Its shares fell more than 3%. Shares dive £20bn, then cool heads prevail SHARES nosedived on first news of the foiled terror attack today but the initial knee-jerk reaction calmed as cooler heads prevailed. In the first hour of London trading, shares tumbled until the FTSE 100 index was down 108 points - equivalent to a £20bn loss. But, mindful of the market's fightbacks after 9/11 and 7/7, dealers said such a sell-off was not warranted. Losses were later trimmed back to just 76.2 on the day, leaving the Footsie at 5784.3. 'Since 9/11, every act of terrorism has seen a law of diminishing returns set in,' said 4Cast analyst Ray Attrill. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
