COMMENT


Heathrow Express’s new managing director, Keith Greenfield, talks to RTM about attracting more foreign visitors to the UK onto the service, and how the operator benchmarks itself against airline business travel standards rather than other TOCs.


At


the end of 2011, Heathrow Express took on a new managing director –


Keith Greenfield, who had been working for parent company BAA on the airlines side.


Although Greenfield is a chartered engi- neer, his background has primarily been in business, including as director of wholesale business at Orange UK from 2000-2009, and airline business development director at Heathrow operator BAA after that.


He has the luxury of taking over at an oper- ator with already-impressive performance figures in the high 90s, to the extent that he can say: “On punctuality and reliability, we are virtually where we need to be.”


However, the consequences of the few service failures it does experience are especially serious, he said.


“The difference for us is that a failure can have very serious consequences for our passengers, because of the nature of our service, and the fact they’re picking up, say, a 14-hour flight from Heathrow to the Far East. If we let them down, the consequences


18 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 12


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