Facing the flak at Terminal 5

Judi Bevan meets BAA chairman Sir Nigel Rudd, an Eighties entrepreneur turned City grandee who still relishes tough challenges — and has met several at Heathrow

Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman of BAA and motor group Pendragon and deputy chairman of Barclays Bank, has a reputation for riding towards the sound of gunfire. ‘I like difficult challenges — if it’s not difficult, where’s the fun?’ he says, an impish grin lighting up his solemn face. Not that the opening of Terminal 5 can have been a bundle of laughs amid the public uproar over cancelled flights and mountains of lost luggage. ‘The first few days were a tragedy,’ says Rudd, who admits that BAA must take the blame for some of the equipment not working properly. ‘It was a matter of a number of small things building up into something much bigger.’ Yet he has nothing but praise for British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh, who took most of the flak.