Turbulence ahead for travellers as London’s Heathrow cuts flights, caps daily passengers

London’s Heathrow airport has thrown a spanner in the works of peoples’ summer holiday plans by limiting the number of passengers going out until mid-September.

The sun is shining in Britain, and summer travel is at its peak, but travellers are miserable due to the chaos at Heathrow Airport. Shortage of staff has led to long baggage collection queues, lost luggage, and flight delays. Due to the lack of hands, no one is there to handle the baggage when it arrives due to delays, resulting in a tsunami of baggage at the airport.

Due to the halt on air travel during the pandemic, handling agencies that provide ground staff — from baggage handlers to security — to the airport cut down on manpower. But now, with everything opening, understaffed airports in many countries are not able to cope with the pent-up travel demand.

Such is the case at Heathrow, too, prompting CEO John Holland-Kaye to cap passenger numbers to 100,000 per day over the summer and call on airlines to stop accepting new bookings .

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Being one of the biggest and busiest airports in London, Heathrow serves about 203 destinations in 84 countries. According to 2018 figures, about 219,458 passengers go in and out of the airport daily — double the limit that has now come into force.

In an open letter to passengers on the capacity cap, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said, “The global aviation industry is recovering from the pandemic, but the legacy of Covid continues to pose challenges for the entire sector as it rebuilds capacity.”

Sharing their limited capacity to serve only 100,000 passengers daily, Holland-Kaye further added, “By making this intervention now, our objective is to protect flights for the vast majority of passengers at Heathrow this summer and to give confidence that everyone who does travel through the airport will have a safe and reliable journey and arrive at their destination with their bags.”

AIRLINES OBJECT

Airlines, recovering from the travel slump during the pandemic, have not taken kindly to the new restrictions. Some, like Gulf Air and Emirates, have refused to comply with Heathrow’s demand to cut flights.

“This is our peak season,” said Regional Director, UK-Europe of Air India, Suhas Jadhav. “This is the time to earn and cancellation or just stopping to book the flights will impact our revenues negatively.”

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Best Choice Travels’ Rahul Golap related passenger frustration with the delays and cancellations. “Many of our clients have booked tickets 6-8 months in advance. There is great excitement of visiting family back in India after two years, and with these cancellations, anger and frustration is expected which we have to deal with.”

He further added, “We are trying to re-book the passengers but that gets difficult due to airlines not being able to cope with the demand.”

HOW THIS IMPACTS TOURISTS?

Air India’s Suhas Yadav told India Today that incoming flights and passengers won’t be affected as much, but the problem arises for outbound travellers.

But due to the Doppler effect, those arriving at Heathrow are likely to be impacted to some degree too. On his way back from New York, Dr Vilas Dige had to wait over two hours for his baggage despite travelling business class. A client of Rahul Golap, on arrival in the middle of the night, was faced with 1,500 people at immigration.

Online check-in before leaving for the airport is a must these days, advises Suhas Jadhav, adding that travellers should try to arrive at least four hours before their flight departure.

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