If not quite digging a third runway, Heathrow was at least expecting by now to know whether the government would allow it. But if the airport’s chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, feels like banging his head on Westminster’s walls after years of its sputtering process, he’s not showing it.

“Like Alan B’Stard,” he remarks, as he adopts the pose of Rik Mayall’s fictional MP beside parliament. Holland-Kaye is not averse to a bit of Union Jack-waving in the cause of business and has a certain floppy-haired, statesmanlike bearing. But otherwise, he appears disappointingly decent, or a particularly well disguised b’stard, declaring that Heathrow must be a good neighbour, clean up its act, and push diversity and opportunity.

Since he joined as commercial director six years ago, Heathrow has seen a third runway plan approved then overturned, before the prime minister set up the airports commission to resolve the issue – or kick it into the long grass. A promised response was delayed until December, when inventive ways were found to prolong the saga for another six months.

But Holland-Kaye, 18 months in the top job, says No 10’s runway-teasing is a sideshow. “Although we tend to talk a lot about expansion, the long-running soap opera, the real focus for us is the day-to-day running and transforming passenger experience,” he says.

In 2009, Heathrow was rated 138th in the world by passengers. Today, it’s eighth. He ascribes this not just to investment, but a changing culture: “It doesn’t cost more to give good service. It’s the same people managed and motivated in a different way.”

The Holland-Kaye way, he admits, made some senior staff grit their teeth. “It’s what I call mojo. Getting mojo in the organisation, making it fun to work there, expressing that fun.”

Take a recent example, he says: “If you went through security at Christmas, a lot of my colleagues were wearing Christmas jumpers and Santa hats. They’ve never been allowed to do that before. A lot of them have wanted to. But there was a perception that you couldn’t fulfil a serious function if you were wearing a Santa hat.”

Was he wearing one? “I was, yes.”

Even the shareholders are signed up. “If you look at our board agenda, it starts with mojo.” Do the Heathrow board – international henchmen including Akbar Al Baker, the fearsome boss of Qatar Airways, and Qing Zhang, running China’s sovereign wealth fund – really sit at the table discussing mojo? “Yes, we do.”

For Holland-Kaye, the word “summed up what I was trying to say. You can define it however you want to. Mojo sounds fun, energetic, creative, different”.

He has also worked to improve Heathrow’s relations with people living around the airport. “We tend to spend a lot of time talking about the negative impact and working on being a good neighbour. But what we also do is contribute a huge amount to local communities.”

In the past, he has lived under the flight path: “Like many people, it never bothered me at all. I used to sit in my garden in Fulham, and enjoy seeing the tailfins.”

That experience, he adds quickly, is entirely different from that of people in Cranford and Feltham who live within two miles of the runways. “The people who live most closely, who are most affected by us, are aspirational,” Holland-Kaye says. “They are typically first or second-generation immigrant families and they want a better quality of life for their kids, and that’s what we offer and that’s why we have so much support locally.”

He speaks passionately about giving opportunities to local schoolchildren. Most senior staff among the 76,000 people working at the airport come, like him, from outside the area, although Heathrow is circled by some of the highest-rated schools in London. “Fantastic quality of education, really smart kids – why aren’t they doing my job?”

Teachers in Hounslow testify how much aircraft noise disturbs lessons. But Holland-Kaye insists: “We’re working with them – it’s part of the warp and weft of an airport community.” Heathrow has contributed to double glazing and adobe huts, originally designed as earthquake shelters, to protect pupils from noise. “It’s absolutely in our interest to make sure they have a good education. The outcomes are fabulous in spite of us, and in some cases, we are helping.”

The son of teachers, Holland-Kaye says he recognises the value of education but had “spent too long around teachers” to follow them, having first become a consultant before recognising the job’s limits: “I wasn’t a very good adviser, I’d never worked in business, so what did I know?” After management roles in brewing and construction he wound up at Britain’s biggest airport, overseeing the development of the new Terminal 2.

Expanding Heathrow’s runways is a tougher sell. But he says: “It’s always been the only answer that will work for the UK, so if it doesn’t happen now, it will come back another time. All the stars are aligned; we just need to get the political bandwidth to make it happen.”

He blames a lack of “headspace” in a government concentrating on another deeply divisive issue for the Conservative party, the EU referendum, and thinks that the ostensible reason for the latest delay – the air quality consultation – will conclude, as the airports commission did, that the airport can expand within legal pollution limits.

However, Holland-Kaye adds: “We need to hold the government to account. Delaying a decision isn’t helping anyone.” Contracts were ready to sign, he says, with a host of UK companies to start building, thereby creating jobs.

If there is no movement on a third runway, he says: “It’s back to plan A – service transformation.” Expansion couldn’t come before 2025, and most staff aren’t involved,” he says. “So I want them to focus on the things we can influence, which is passenger service.”

But didn’t even Holland-Kaye’s mojo flag a little in December when the government, for the umpteenth time, stalled on a promised decision?

“I always have mojo,” he declares. “We always make progress. The prime minister has now accepted [that] there is a need for new capacity and it’s going to be Heathrow or Gatwick, and that’s a big step forward.”