London’s Heathrow Airport Limits Number of Daily Passengers Amid Staff Shortage

Heathrow Airport has announced a cap on the daily number of passenger and is asking airlines to stop selling additional tickets for travel this summer.

The London airport will limit passengers to 100,000 per day until September 11. The new limit comes as the airport is struggling with increased travel demand and staffing shortages. That includes pilots, cabin crew, check-in staff, ground crew and baggage handlers.

The cap was announced on an open letter to passengers. “At Heathrow, we have seen 40 years of passenger growth in just four months,” said CEO John Holland-Kaye.

He noted in the open letter that the airport started recruiting more staff back in November in anticipation of increased demand for this summer. By the end of July, the airport will have as many people working in security as they had pre-pandemic.

Many airlines have been working to reduce the number of passengers going in and out of Heathrow. But Holland-Kaye said that an excess of seats had already been sold and therefore airlines needed to stop selling more tickets.

“Over the past few weeks, as departing passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000 a day, we have started to see periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable,” he said.

Compounding the problem, Heathrow said the punctuality of arriving flights is “very low” because of delays at other airports and airspace congestion across Europe.

“Our assessment is that the maximum number of daily departing passengers that airlines, airline ground handlers and the airport can collectively serve over the summer is no more than 100,000,” Holland-Kaye said in the letter. “The latest forecasts indicate that even despite the amnesty, daily departing seats over the summer will average 104,000 – giving a daily excess of 4,000 seats”.

Number from 2018 show that the daily number of passengers going through Heathrow was nearly 220,000. That was the total for arrivals and departures.