Heathrow’s £20m strategy to cope with Olympics visitors

Olympic Family members will be fast-tracked at passport control with 300 extra UK Border Agency staff manning dedicated “Games lanes”. But BAA will not face its biggest challenge until the day after the closing ceremony — August 13 — when the airport will be inundated with more than 138,000 passengers and 203,000 bags, in its busiest ever day.

Other key dates will be July 16, when scores of teams fly in as the Olympic village opens, and July 26, when many of the 25,500 sponsors and their guests will arrive for the opening ceremony.

Heathrow will handle 60,000 official Games passengers — 80 per cent of the “Olympic Family” — including athletes, sponsors and media. Prime Minister David Cameron gave a reminder of the pressure on London’s airports yesterday when he said without more capacity, economic growth would suffer.

Mr Cole admitted that Heathrow, halted by a few inches of snow in 2010, could be at the mercy of high winds or a thunderstorm. “We are very full and any minor impact could affect us.

“The weather is very difficult here and there’s also any security impact either in central London or here at Heathrow. [Security] is something we can’t control but we are working very closely with the Department for Transport and other departments in terms of what our response would be.”