Thousands of travellers to Heathrow face possible flight cancellations in coming weeks after the London airport capped the number of passengers that it will handle for the next two months.
Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye conceded that delays and cancellations mount once daily passenger numbers pass 100,000 at the hub, used by many Irish people travelling to Britain or on to elsewhere.
Consequently, Heathrow has told airlines to stop selling tickets for summer flights there as it will cap passenger numbers at 100,000 a day from Tuesday, July 12th, to September 11th.
Aer Lingus, responsible for the bulk of Irish travellers to Heathrow, confirmed that it was waiting for further directions from Heathrow to assess the impact on its schedules.
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“Due to the large number of flights into London Heathrow, Aer Lingus will look to minimise disruption caused to customers by these mandated flight cancellations,” the airline said, adding it would contact passengers in coming days.
British Airways, which also serves Heathrow from Irish airports, said its teams were weighing Heathrow’s statement and would make an announcement shortly.
Mr Holland-Kaye blamed staff shortages and unprecedented passenger growth for the move. Heathrow has drawn fire from industry groups, including the International Air Transport Association, for its handling of aviation’s current crisis.
Heathrow calculates that airlines have 104,000 seats available a day on flights departing from there over the rest of the summer, potentially 4,000 more passengers daily than the airport can handle.
However, Mr Holland-Kaye said that, on average, airlines had sold just 1,500 of these seats each day over the next two months. “And so we are asking our airline partners to step selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers,” he said.
“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.”
Mr Holland-Kaye admitted that Heathrow recognised that summer trips would be cancelled, moved to other airports or another day as a consequence. “We apologise to those whose travel plans are affected,” he said.
Dublin Airport has so far avoided asking airlines to cancel flights as it continues to hire security staff to deal with growing passenger numbers.
Last month, 2.8 million people passed through there, while its owner, DAA, maintains that three out of four got through security in less than 30 minutes while 93 per cent queued for less than 45 minutes.
The Heathrow airport chief argued that other airports, in Britain and around the world, have taken similar steps to help them cope with the combination of surging passenger numbers and staff shortages.
He noted that as the number of travellers through Heathrow topped 100,000 a day, punctuality deteriorated, more baggage was mislaid or delayed, and cancellations increased.
Mr Holland-Kaye said this stemmed from late arrivals, a result of delays at other airports, and passenger numbers exceeding the capacity of airlines, ground handlers and the hub itself.
Heathrow began recruiting last November in anticipation of travel recovering this year and by the end of this month expects to have as many security officers as it had before the pandemic.
“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 turn around aircraft,” Mr Holland-Kaye said.
He pointed out that this constrained the airport’s overall capacity. Ground handlers generally work for companies contracted by airlines to do this work, so are not employed by airports.
