Team size: 34 including risk and business assurance

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

As an operational business, Heathrow’s legal team is focused on delivering the company’s vision, which is to give passengers the best airport service in the world. In order to do so, a complex organisational environment needs to be delivered, encompassing regulatory, operational, commercial, financial and strategic matters, whilst also looking to proactively meet the challenges of sustainability and community involvement. This presents an extremely broad scope of work with increasing complexity, which our team delivers daily. We aim to work in partnership with key stakeholders while also looking to ensure that we are protecting the best interests of the business, team Heathrow, and the passengers who choose to fly from the airport. All of this requires continuous engagement with the business, board, shareholders and management.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the business was focused on the myriad of challenges and threats to the aviation sector, ensuring passengers could fly safely and were aware of the restrictions and requirements of doing so. We kept Heathrow open as a front door to the UK, enabling essential travel and transport of goods, whilst innovating in the use of our facilities and services to cope with the ever-changing issues arising out of Covid-19. Post pandemic, we have responded to the rapid bounce-back of international travel, re-opening shuttered facilities and working with team Heathrow, and the broader aviation ecosystem, to ensure that passengers have reliable journeys and that a safe environment is maintained for everyone.

We are currently working through the process of our regulatory settlement period, which will be crucial for ensuring that we can deliver the level of service our passengers demand, and that we wish to deliver, in terms of both investment and operating costs. Heathrow’s aim is to ensure a settlement is agreed that puts passengers first and encourages everyone in the industry to work together to better serve the travelling public.

We have worked with airlines, air traffic control, border force, retailers, ground handlers, cargo providers and the multitude of companies engaged at the airport, to ensure that capacity can be built back, but not exposing passengers to unnecessary late cancellations or delays. We continue to invest and develop the airport’s infrastructure, both physical and digital, maintain our estate, and lead in innovative ways to protect the environment.

Mine Hifzi