BAA, the UK’s main airport operator added £100m to its previously planned £400m IT expenditure to 2013.

The company said it needs to simplify an unnecessarily complex set of systems at the airport so as to give Heathrow a better quality of service and reduce costs.

It signed a five year outsourcing deal with Cap Gemini that is expected to improve service quality, reduce costs, and accelerate the pace of investment.

Philip Langsdale, chief information officer at BAA, said in a statement: "Because our focus is on running airports, it makes sense for costly specialist IT functions to be outsourced and our buying power means that it's much more cost effective. We want to improve our resilience and ensure that we have the right systems in place to share the right information at the right time. Capgemini will have a key role in supporting this."

 
Control Tower, Heathrow Airport

"Our airlines need better more timely information andimproved service quality .Our priority is improving our passengers'experiences and getting the best value we can on behalf of our airline customers. We will have spent over £400m on IT in the five year period ending in 2013 as part of a much wider capital spending programme designed to modernise every aspect of Heathrow. I recognise technology on its own cannot deliver these improvements ... but it is a crucial enabler"

Heathrow based airlines suffered huge delays in December 2010 when snow and ice closed the runways.

At the time the airport operator was severely criticised over a lack of information provision.