London’s Heathrow Airport has taken the unprecedented step of telling airlines to stop selling tickets as it caps daily passenger numbers at 100,000 for the summer travel season – a measure meant to quell travel chaos caused by soaring travel demand and staff shortages.
Britain’s busiest airport said the passenger limit for passengers that it can handle each day will continue through Sept. 11 with the restriction likely to result in more cancelled flights even after airlines already slashed thousands of flights from their summer schedules.
UK aviation authorities demanded that airlines ensure they can operate without disruption over the summer, with carriers not punished for not using their valuable takeoff and landing slots.
Even with that allowance, Heathrow, which had warned a day earlier that it may ask airlines to cut flights further, said it still expected more passengers than airport ground staff could handle.
Earlier this summer the UK government encouraged airlines to cancel summer flights ahead of a July 8 deadline that would potentially result in a loss of future rights to valuable land slots.
But while some airlines took “significant action,” according to Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye, others did not.
“And we believe that further action is needed now to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey,” he added in an open letter to passengers.
Airlines are expected to operate flights over the summer with an overall daily capacity of 104,000 seats, or 4,000 more than Heathrow can handle, the airport said. Only about 1,500 of these daily seats have been sold to passengers.
“So, we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers,” Holland-Kaye said.
As a result some analysts suggest that airlines may continue to operate flights with empty seats (so as not to risk slots), while others expect prices to rise due to restricted demand.
Booming demand for summer travel after two years of COVID-19 travel have overwhelmed European airlines and airports that had laid off tens of thousands of pilots, cabin crew, check-in staff, ground crew and baggage handlers amid the depths of the pandemic.
Heathrow has said it started a recruiting drive in November and expects security staffing to be back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of July.
“However, there are some critical functions in the airport which are still significantly under-resourced, in particular ground handlers, who are contracted by airlines to provide check-in staff, load and unload bags and turnaround aircraft,” making it a “significant constraint” to overall capacity, Holland-Kaye said.
Heathrow recorded its busiest day ever on Aug. 4, 2019, with approximately 131,000 passengers.