Heathrow limits passenger capacity to 100000 for summer travel to control chaos

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Heathrow airport is struggling with handling the passengers in the summer travel surge. Hence they have asked the airlines to stop selling tickets if the number crosses 100000. The staff shortage and the absence of skills in them are the major reasons behind the clog.

As have many other UK airports, the chaotic experience in the hub is getting worse day by day. The major airports have seen a significant downfall in service quality. Many flights have been cancelled and that has already created long waiting times.

In response to this Airlines have planned to operate flights in such a way that about 104,000 passengers are going to receive services from the airport. They added that on average, about 1,500 of the excess 4,000 daily seats had already been sold and thus they have asked their partners to stop selling more seats for the summer travels.

About 110,000 to 125,000 people departed from Heathrow airport before the pandemic. This was the usual number of passengers departing from Heathrow every summer.

Apologising to those affected, Heathrow airport officials stated that either the travel will take place another day or would be completely scrapped.

The Heathrow chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, wrote in an open letter to passengers on Tuesday that since the last few weeks, as departing passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000 a day, they have started to see periods when service drops to a level which is not acceptable. These include long queue times, delays for passengers requiring assistance, bags not travelling with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality and last-minute cancellations.

He also acknowledged that some airlines have taken action regarding this while others have not. 

They have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap with effect from 12 July to 11 September. Similar measures to control passenger demand have been implemented at other airports both in the UK and around the world.

Last month, the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority, the regulator asked the sector to be ready for more passenger management. Service quality management is thus absolutely necessary to deal with. After this, some Airlines removed some of the flights from the list.

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