London Heathrow’s Capacity Limits
London Heathrow airport recently announced a cap on flights and daily passengers to ease the summer travel chaos. The airport has been struggling with increased travel demand and staffing shortages. That includes pilots, cabin crew, check-in staff, ground crew and baggage handlers.
The London airport has put a limit of 100,000 departing passengers per day, and told airline to stop selling more tickets. Originally, the cap was supposed to end after two months in mid-September, but Heathrow extended it last week until the end of October.
The airport is now saying that airlines need to hire ground staff more aggressively to help overcome persistent travel disruptions, warning that the cap might have to stay in place for at least another year.
“This is not going to be a quick fix,” Chief Executive Officer John Holland-Kaye said in an interview with Bloomberg. “It’s absolutely possible that we could have another summer with a cap still in place. It’s going to take 12 to 18 months, and not just at Heathrow.”
Airline CEOs have criticized Heathrow for a lack of foresight and for underestimating the strong return of travel demand. But, in a Tuesday update, Heathrow reversed the blame onto airlines and asserted that a shortage of ground handling staff has caused the airport’s capacity problems. Those issues include delays for over 40% of flights this summer and thousands of unclaimed luggage.
The airport said it has hired 1,300 people in the last six months and will have replenished security resources back to their pre-pandemic levels by the end of this July. But, the airport says that airlines have not done their part.
“The number of people employed in ground handling fell sharply over the last 2 years, as airlines cut costs during the pandemic'” the airport said. “We have been raising our concerns over lack of handler resource for 9 months. We estimate that airline ground handlers have no more than 70% of pre-pandemic resource, and there has been no increase in numbers since January.”
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