The company in papers almost daily for its sub-standard services at London airports has decided to change personnel right at the top. BAA has announced that Colin Matthews would replace Stephen Nelson from the 1st of April, 2008.

Matthews has previously worked as a CEO for Severn Trent, a British water company and also occupied the capacity of a technical director for British Airways.

BAA is facing criticism from all facets of management at London airports, especially at Heathrow. A third of Heathrow flights are delayed and the blame game has taken the airport operator as its convoy. If the slide at Heathrow continues, other airports in Europe could soon replace Heathrow as the hub in Western and Central parts of Europe.

Terminal 5 with its servicing capability of 35m passengers a year seems to have given a new lease of life for BAA. The opening of the new terminal will decongest other terminals and offer scope for redevelopment. A third runway and a sixth terminal are in the pipeline but with the protestors sitting on their backs persistently, obtaining approvals cannot be imagined as an easy task.

This is the moment that could have people gasping and wanting to see more than what they could see. The Singapore Airlines A380 flight will land in Heathrow today and history is about to be created. This will be the first time that a commercial A380 flight will fly in UK skies and set its wheels on UK soil (runway rather).

The Singapore Airlines flight SQ308 is scheduled to land in Heathrow at 1505 hrs GMT. The flight departs from Singapore and is expected to have 470 passengers onboard. Every passenger will be receiving a certificate for making the historic flight to UK.

Mark Wright, a resident of Northamptonshire will be one of the passengers on this inaugural flight. He is a member of First to Fly group and has been on many such inaugural flights.

He exclaims - "I have long been an aviation enthusiast and was really keen on Concorde although I was never fortunate to fly on it. I saw the A380 when it came to Farnborough in 2006 and thought it looked terrific. I was particularly impressed with the wings. They were amazing."

The first commercial A380 service started in October last year from Singapore to Sydney, Australia. SA has 3 A380s at its disposal and has ordered 16 more. British Airways too has ordered 12 which are scheduled to be delivered in 2012; Virgin Atlantic’s 6 in 2013.

The new age of air travel will officially begin in the UK today. The double-decker planes will bring in a refreshing change to the age of mini and medium sized planes. Heathrow airport was renovated last year to accommodate A380s and the new terminal 5 is built for its likes as well.

Ryanair, pulled up for a sexy school girl ad says that it will blatantly ignore Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) ruling and will go ahead publishing what they feel right. ASA does not have any legal rights over the ads published but it can only pull strings by its connections in the media circle.

Ryanair had published an advertisement showing a scantily dressed schoolgirl which read “Back to School Fares”. This ad was published in three leading newspapers and on Ryanair’s website. Soon after ASA’s ruling, the ad was taken off newspapers but continued to appear on the website.

When contacted, this is what Ryanair’s head of communications, Peter Sherrard had to say - "...because they have made so many idiotic decisions that stand in the face of common sense. It's about time someone stood up to them".

Undermining the authority’s ruling might not help Ryanair on a longer run and might find itself in a fast sinking deep hole. It’s not about standing up to the authority but to put up sensible ads that do not end up offending people like French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his then-girl-friend.

The threat over British Airways’ pilots striking on the Easter seems to be a thing of the past; for now at least. The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) has decided not to strike on the holiday weekend as it is likely to hurt passengers more than the airline.

General Secretary of Balpa Jim McAuslan said - "Our row is not with the travelling public who will have worked hard for their Easter break."

The row over BA’s subsidiary, Openskies is not resolved yet and the resolution doesn’t look to be on the cards as well. BA pilots fear that their jobs are insecure as the company might opt for cheaper and outsourced replacements.

BA cannot afford to relax as the possibility of a strike is still real and will take place soon. They will have to soon find a compromising solution to avert a major break down which not only impacts BA but passengers as well.

Passengers have to shell out extra money for air tickets, it was announced. The rise in prices is attributed to aircraft landing charges at Heathrow and Gatwick airports in London by BAA.

The actual increase in ticket price is not steep at £2 but what looks scary is that the charges could increase by 23.5% this year at Heathrow while at Gatwick, it’s estimated to be at 21%. The approval for the rise in charges was approved the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to facilitate improvements at the airports it manages.

BAA statement read – “The review does not recognise sufficiently: the scale of the task we are embarked on; the pressures of handling such large infrastructure projects; the full cost of the increased security requirements; as well as the impact of the credit market turmoil...”

British Airways doesn’t seem to be too happy with the increase, as expected. It has blatantly blamed BAA owner Ferrovial’s high debt levels as the sole reason.