London Heathrow International Airport (LHR) this week said it would temporarily impose a capacity cap until additional airport and airline staff are hired and trained to serve what it describes as 40 years of passenger growth in the last four months.
In an open letter to passengers on the capacity cap, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “Over the past few weeks, as departing passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000 a day, we have started to see periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable: long queue times, delays for passengers requiring assistance, bags not traveling with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality and last-minute cancellations.”
Holland-Kaye said this is due to a combination of reduced arrivals punctuality, as a result of delays at other airports and in European airspace, and increased passenger numbers starting to exceed the combined capacity of airlines, airline ground handlers and the airport, adding “Our colleagues are going above and beyond to get as many passengers away as possible, but we cannot put them at risk for their own safety and wellbeing.”
The cap will last from July 12 to Sept. 11 and limit departing passengers to 100,000 daily, Holland-Kaye said, adding LHR forecasts suggest that departures would have been running slightly more than that at 104,000 per day.
Holland-Kaye said LHR is asking carriers serving the airport to stop selling some tickets to ensure they stay below the 100,000 thresh-hold.
“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,” he continued in his public letter posted on the LHR web site. “We recognize that this will mean some summer journeys will either be moved to another day, another airport or be cancelled and we apologize to those whose travel plans are affected. We are all recruiting as fast as we can and aim to return to the excellent service you should expect from the UK’s hub airport as soon as possible.”
