Airport terminal renaming rejected by Charles

The boss of a major airport wants to name one of its terminals after King Charles III.

London Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye said the UK’s busiest airport has a ‘long association’ with the royal family and renaming Terminal 5 in the King’s honour would create ‘nice symmetry’. This follows a report that Charles rejected the offer.

Heathrow wanted to mark the coronation by renaming

Terminal 5 after the King, according to The Times. Charles was ‘said to be reluctant to accept’ so Buckingham Palace ‘called in ministers to turn down the airport’s offer’, the newspaper reported.

One of the most recent landmarks to be named after royalty was in 2017 when a jetty in Portsmouth was named after the Princess Royal. Terminal 2 at the west London airport has been known as the Queen’s Terminal since a rebuilding project was completed in 2014.

Asked about the potential naming of Terminal 5, Mr Holland-Kaye said: ‘There would be a nice symmetry I think to have our two main terminals – Terminal 5 and Terminal 2 – named the King’s Terminal and the Queen’s Terminal.

‘But that’s a matter for the Cabinet Office. We’ve had a long association with the royal family. We’re very proud of that.

‘I think it’s great that we celebrate the coronation and so we will be doing this in other ways.’ According to the Press Association, the offer was not rejected on environmental grounds.

A Government spokesperson said applications for attributing royal titles are assessed against a strict criteria and are very rarely approved. They added no significant approvals were made in the last year.