The Heathrow Terminal 5 (T5) opening debacle is expected to cost British Airways about £16 million, the airline announced today.

But it added that this amount was far less than the cost of earlier fog-caused disruption at Heathrow and that T5 was now running "very well".

Also, there was no sign that bookings had dipped following the disastrous T5 opening, BA group treasurer and head of investor relations George Stinnes said.

A full Saturday service - when slightly fewer flights take off and land than on weekdays - was expected to operate this Saturday.

Mr Stinnes added: "We expect next week to get back to a full weekday programme."

He was speaking after BA announced its March 2008 traffic figures, which showed passenger numbers totalled just under 2.72 million last month - a 2.8% dip on the March 2007 figures.

BA's UK and European passenger levels fell 2.8% last month, while passenger numbers to North and South America were 0.6% down, with Asia Pacific down 6.0% and Africa and the Middle East down 5.7%.

Premium traffic - the number of passengers travelling in first and business class seats - was down 5.0% last month, while non-premium (economy seat) traffic fell 2.3%.

BA planes travelled 75.4% full last month compared with 76.3% in March 2007.

BA said: "The figures also reflect the events which surrounded the opening of Terminal 5 on March 27. The impact was borne by the short-haul schedule, where there were 300 cancelled flights, equating to 0.2% of capacity.

"The financial impact of these events is estimated to be around £16 million, reflecting all costs associated with the disruption and lost revenue opportunities. Although there remains a small number of cancellations for today and tomorrow, the Terminal 5 performance is steadily improving."

BA went on: "Comparisons between March 2007 and March 2008 are complicated by the timing of Easter, which fell in April in 2007, and by the de-linking of UK school holidays from the Easter period and into the middle of April.

"This altered both premium and non-premium travel patterns, an impact which is also likely to be seen in April's statistics."

Mr Stinnes said: "The T5 problems affected just 0.2% of our capacity. When we have had three or four days of fog at Heathrow, as much as 1.5% of our capacity has been affected. So the impact of the T5 difficulties has been relatively small."

Asked if the T5 problems had led to people not wanting to fly with BA, Mr Stinnes said: "We have seen absolutely no impact on bookings."

BA is due to move much of its long-haul operation into T5 at the end of this month.

Mr Stinnes said today: "Now we need to look at whether meeting the timetable (of April 30) is a sensible thing to do. We will review that. It's a very big move."

He added that it was hoped by the end of today that all bags that still had to be returned to T5 passengers would be cleared from Heathrow and be on the way to their owners.

BA cancelled 34 flights at T5 today. The airline also confirmed reports that a Chicago-bound flight left Terminal 4 yesterday empty of both passengers and crew as a result of staff shortages.

But their spokeswoman said: "This is nothing to do with staffing in T5, it was as a result of unrelated issues and I am not aware of any flights today suffering the same problem."

Travellers arriving to catch flights today enjoyed a smoothly running system. The departures hall in T5 was fairly empty as passengers moved swiftly from check-in through security and into the airside portion of the building.

After using the internet check-in points, few passengers had to queue at all to drop their bags off.

Meanwhile, low-fare airline Ryanair announced today that it had carried 4.48 million passengers in March 2008 - a 19% rise on the March 2007 figure.

Its planes flew 79% full last month - a 1% increase on March 2007.