Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Thursday, the 24th of July.

And thank you for joining me. Today, it's all about Heathrow. What is happening at the UK's Europe's busiest airport?

I've been talking to Thomas Woldby, the chief executive of Heathrow, and here's what he's been telling

me, starting with how busy the summer is looking.

Heathrow today is the most punctual big year for New York, which we are both very heavy about

and very proud about, because that really just improves everything else, including, for example,

baggage performance.

And how have you managed to do that, given the incredible stresses on the very, very compact

footprint that you have at Heathrow compared with other big European airport?

The key is really cooperation with all the partners, so airlines, nets, andlers,

so better coordination, more realistic

scheduling. We have introduced a new system, it's co-paire-wise, but it means that we can

actually land a couple of aircraft more per hour. That's new work together with nets, and that's

an artificial and cellion solution, stuff like that, all these little things that contribute to

get to all the machinery

if you're better.

This is all about cooperation in the entire ecosystem.

And if we do that well, we can achieve, I think, results that that is even better than we

have expected.

And I must say, whereas I had expected an improvement in punctuality, to actually be number

one with the numbers we've seen is a positive surprising

for me.

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