Friday, April 3, 2020
U.K.’s busiest airport, Heathrow Airport will close one of its runways from next week as air traffic continues to fall globally amid the coronavirus or COVID19 pandemic.
The London hub will operate its landings and takeoffs from one strip from Monday 6 April to increase the flexibility and safety for staff, passengers and cargo” throughout the COVID-19 outbreak.
The airport has two runways and will alternate which one they keep open on a weekly basis, a spokesman said.
They added that although they are seeing significantly fewer flights at the moment, Heathrow Airport will remain open so that they can continue to play a crucial role in helping to secure vital medical goods and food for the nation during this unprecedented epidemic. In 2018, Heathrow served 80.1 million passengers.
A total of 475,624 flights took off from the west London site in the same year. The news comes after British Airways said it was putting more than 30,000 staff on furlough. The airline has introduced its own job retention scheme similar to the Government’s, which will still give staff 80% of their pay plus 80% of their allowances.
A British Airways spokesman said on Thursday that their colleagues have done a brilliant job keeping vital routes open to reunite customers with their families, and bring back supplies to our hospitals, factories and shops. But with the challenges of coronavirus, like many airlines, they have been in touch with colleagues to advise that they are implementing the furlough scheme to minimise the financial impact on them.
Tags: Airline News, Coronavirus, heathrow airport
