London Heathrow Airport says that daily passenger number limits have eased the travel crunch from staff shortages and soaring demand that has seen a pile-up of issues such as flight cancellations and lost baggage over the Europe summer season.
Britain’s busiest airport controversially capped the daily number of departing passengers at 100,000 until 11 September 2022, asking airlines to stop selling tickets and cut flights.
As a result, British Airways has stopped ticket sales for short-haul flights departing from Heathrow before 16 August.
The cap has cut down on last-minute flight cancellations and improved baggage delivery and on-time planes, Heathrow said in a statement.
The airport said it has hired 1,300 people and that the number of security screeners is at pre-pandemic levels, allowing 88 per cent of travellers to get through checkpoints within 20 minutes.
Heathrow Airport CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “Passengers are seeing better, more reliable journeys since the introduction of the demand cap, which has only been possible because of the collective and determined efforts of the airport, airline and wider Team Heathrow teams.”
Heathrow has been a frequent scene of chaos this summer with long lines for security and technical glitches with the baggage system that resulted in huge piles of lost and unclaimed luggage.
Airport authorities said building up the airline ground crews that service planes are key to easing the passenger cap, and Heathrow has launched a review with that goal.
Emirates and Etihad were two airlines that refused to abide by the cap in July, with a spokesperson at the time saying, “Our priority over the coming months is to maintain the resilience of our operation and to protect the travel plans of our customers flying to and from (Heathrow)”.
More than six million passengers travelled through Heathrow last month and 16 million are expected between July and September 2022.
Via AAP