Under-fire BAA Chief Exective Colin Matthews has given up his bonus following the holiday travel chaos suffered by thousands of passengers at snow-hit Heathrow.

Mr Matthews was today again apologising to travellers, was again explaining what had caused the problems, and was again reinforcing what urgent action will now be taken to stop this from happening again. This is crisis PR textbook stuff.

Despite Heathrow Airport being totally, utterly and shambolically unprepared for the recent bad winter weather, the BAA boss has not hidden himself away and has bravely faced the assembled media throng – something many high-profile CEOs would not do, cowardly preferring to shuffle out their no.2 or the poor PR!

Whilst sacrificing his 2010 bonus will understandably not satisfy those angry and frustrated passengers who had to bed down for days in what the press deemed Heathrow refugee camps, it is a public admission of his failure, as BAA’s boss, and a personal gesture of goodwill.