Heathrow Airport could limit the number of passengers during the holiday season, according to airport administrators.
At the end of October, a daily limit of 100,000 that was set during the summer owing to staff shortages will be abolished.
However, Heathrow warned it might return “if necessary” to prevent flight disruptions in the days leading up to the holiday season.
It is unlikely that passenger numbers will return to pre-pandemic levels for a lot of years, but the airport needs to hire thousands more employees.
Heathrow executives anticipate 25% fewer passengers this year compared to 2019, with up to 62 million expected to pass through.
It was stated that the cost-of-living issue, the Ukraine war, and the influence of Covid had impacted international travel demand.
The chief executive of Britain’s largest airport, John Holland-Kaye, told that the airport intended to “return to full capacity as quickly as feasible.”
“We don’t want a cap at all,” he stated on the Today show. “The purpose of a limit is to maintain a balance between supply and demand.
“It was exactly the correct decision to make during the summer. It meant that throughout the summer vacation, people could travel with confidence.”
Following the elimination of Covid restrictions, airports and airlines have struggled to recruit enough staff to meet the increased demand for foreign travel, resulting in flight delays and cancellations for thousands of customers.
At the height of the pandemic, airports and airlines eliminated thousands of jobs, and many people have not returned to business because they have found other employment.
Heathrow reported that around 75,000 jobs at 400 airport-operating businesses had been reduced to 50,000 because of the pandemic.
According to the report, to meet demand, these organizations must re-staff positions such as ground handlers, airline employees, and retail workers. There are roughly 13,000 open positions.
During the summer, airlines across the United Kingdom were urged to reduce flight schedules, and Heathrow’s baggage handling problems caused a sea of bags to pile up at Terminal 2 due to a technological glitch.
To reduce cancellations, Heathrow set a daily limit of 100,000 passengers during the height of the summer season. Despite this policy, the airport reported that 18 million passengers passed through its terminals, making it the busiest in Europe.
Emirates, one of the airport’s primary airlines, first opposed the airport’s demands to stop selling summer tickets, calling them “unreasonable and unacceptable.”
Before the Dubai-based airline agreed to the cap, it accused the airport of having a “blatant disdain” for consumers and said it feared “an ‘armageddon’ crisis due to their incompetence and inaction.”
Mr. Holland-Kaye urged the government to assist airports in expediting the necessary security checks when employing personnel. He stated that having access to HMRC data regarding applicants’ employment history over the past five years would be “the simplest way to assist us.
The government has previously stated that it has used “a variety of initiatives to expedite security assessments,” stating that 97% of accreditation checks are completed on average within five days.
The Department of Transport stated that it has made it possible for firms to enroll new employees in some training programs while background checks are ongoing.
Despite a decline in passenger counts, Heathrow posted a pre-tax profit of £643 million in the nine months leading up to September 30. This followed a loss of £1.4 billion during the same time in the previous year.
