Heathrow in £2bn loss as Covid 'devastates' air travel

Heathrow Airport has reported a £2bn annual loss after passenger numbers dropped to levels last seen in the 1970s during the coronavirus pandemic.

It said 2020 was the toughest year in its 75-year history and the loss "underlines the devastating impact of Covid-19 on aviation".

Heathrow's results contained a warning it may not be able to carry on if passenger numbers remain low.

However, its boss said the airport had enough money to cope until 2023.

John Holland-Kaye also told the BBC that he thought people would be likely to be able to go on their summer holidays.

Under the UK government's roadmap out of lockdown, which was published on Monday, international travel might be able to resume in mid-May.

Heathrow normally has about 80 million passengers per year, but it said numbers in 2020 dropped to 22 million.

In the long-term, if passenger numbers were to drop below 27 million, Heathrow would be in danger of breaching deals it has with creditors, it said.

Heathrow doesn't have many passengers at the moment, but one thing it does have a lot of is borrowing.

The London airport has built a £15bn debt pile in the past decade while paying its shareholders several billion pounds in dividends.

The collapse in traffic caused by the coronavirus pandemic has understandably put a strain on its finances, to the extent that the company has asked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), its economic regulator, for an increase in prices to compensate.

The request has outraged its airline customers, who say they and their passengers should not have to pick up the airport's pandemic tab.

There is no danger of Heathrow running out of money in the short term - it has about £4bn in cash, enough to keep it ticking over for two years - but the accounts do include a warning about the future.

The directors say that the uncertainty about the timescale and nature of the recovery from the pandemic "indicates the existence of a material uncertainty which could cast significant doubt upon the group and the company's ability to continue as a going concern".

It would take a serious prolongation of traffic restrictions for Heathrow's current financial structure to crack - but the warning underlines why the company is pressing the CAA so hard for a price increase.