Air passengers face paying for passports to be checked

PA

Passengers could be forced to pay for having their passports checked under new government plans to end the chaos at London's Heathrow Airport.

Higher landing charges for airlines are being proposed in order solve congestion at Britain's borders, and these fees are likely to be passed on directly to airline customers.

British Airways has already confirmed that increased landing charges could lead to higher ticket prices for passengers, says a report in the Financial Times.

Staff cuts to Heathrow's Border Force have triggered long queues which are "damaging the UK's reputation", according to the mayor of London Boris Johnson.

Waits of up to two and a half hours have been reported, and this is projected to get worse during the Olympics in what has already being predicted as a "summer of chaos".

Over the past two years, Home Secretary Theresa May has cut 800 UK Border Forces staff, and another 700 Border Force jobs are to be cut by 2015, according to leaked reports.

The prime minister David Cameron and airline chiefs are due to hold crisis talks with the Theresa May to agree on a solution.

But airlines including Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines and Virgin Atlantic have confirmed to the Financial Times that they opposed the government blueprint.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Willie Walsh, the chief executive of International Airlines Group, which includes BA, accused the government of failing to get to grips with the crisis. He said that claims by the government that nobody had been forced to wait more than one and a half hours were untrue, and said that Britain was giving a message that it was not open for business.

Immigration minister Damian Green confirmed to The Guardian that the pay-for-passport-checks proposal was being discussed between BAA, which owns Heathrow, and the airlines.