BA Eyes Merger Prospect

Updated:07:48, Tuesday May 27, 2003

BA is considering its response to proposals for a Virgin-BMI link up.

BA: considering options

BA executive Roger Maynard will be "studying all the issues" before giving a response to the threat of BA's two biggest rivals at Heathrow joining forces.

He will discuss the issues with CEO Rod Eddington and finance boss John Rishton.

BA is understood to be considering making a bid for either airline after the two groups last week confirmed they had held merger talks.

Virgin is likely to be the more appealing to BA, as a bid for BMI would be likely to fall foul of competition regulators.

BA has 40% of take-off and landing slots at Heathrow and BMI has 14%.

That means a combined group would have more than half the available slots, and it is thought likely it would be forced to give some of these up.

But this issue would not be a problem if BA bid for Virgin.

BMI also primarily operates short-haul routes, while BA's main business focus is long haul.

Meanwhile, it emerged that Virgin had considered a takeover bid for BA earlier this year before it entered talks with BMI.