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Walsh fumes as British Airways HQ set to be demolished as part of Heathrow expansion

Expansion at Heathrow Airport is set to unleash significant upheaval at British Airways after it was revealed that the UK airline’s headquarters are to be demolished once expansion work begins.

BA and parent company International Airlines Group (IAG) are both based at Waterside, a £200m facility in Harmondsworth which was only constructed in 1998 and is housed within a massive man-made park.

However, the facility is now set to be destroyed to make way for the new runway at the airport which obtained government approval last month.

Despite entailing such significant upheaval for the UK’s most well-known global airline, which also operates around half of all flights out of the London airport, it has been revealed that BA was not consulted about Heathrow’s plans and that IAG Chief Executive Officer, Willie Walsh, only found out that his HQ would be destroyed after looking at a map of the plans.

Walsh said: “We were never actually informed or advised by Heathrow that they intended to knock down our headquarters.

“The first I saw of it was when the Airport Commission report came out and I saw a map and I thought, that looks very close to Waterside. Then I discovered it actually went right through Waterside.”

To make matters worse for IAG and Walsh, the airline is now facing up to the prospect of paying for the destruction of its own headquarters.

Not only will IAG have to swallow higher operating costs as a consequence of operating at the expanded airport, but the compensation scheme from which landowners are set to be reimbursed is derived from Heathrow’s regulatory asset base of which IAG pays 56%, according to Walsh.

Despite Walsh’s dissatisfaction, a Heathrow spokesperson told the Guardian: “British Airways has been consulted on the detail of our expansion plans throughout, including options for the relocation of Waterside ahead of the submission to the Airports Commission.

“We are optimising our plans and are determined to work with our airlines to deliver them as cost efficiently as possible, which in turn will keep our airline charges as close to flat with today’s charges as possible.”