Heathrow passenger cap could return for Christmas

Heathrow Airport could impose a cap on passenger numbers at busy times around Christmas, bosses have said.

A 100,000 daily cap imposed over the summer due to staff shortages will be lifted at the end of October.

But Heathrow warned it could return “if needed” to avoid flight cancellations in the run-up to the festive period.

Britain’s largest airport said passenger numbers were unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels “for a number of years”.

Heathrow bosses expect there to be 25% fewer travellers this year compared to 2019, with up to 62 million people passing through.

The cost-of-living crisis, Ukraine war and impact of Covid had hit demand for international travel, it said.

Thousands of passengers have faced delays and flight cancellations in recent months with airports and airlines struggling to recruit enough staff to cope with the surge in demand for international travel, following the removal of Covid restrictions.

Airlines were asked to cut flights from schedules over the summer and Heathrow itself faced baggage handling problems, which resulted in a sea of luggage piling up at Terminal 2 after a technical malfunction.

In a bid to curb cancellations, Heathrow imposed its 100,000 daily cap over the peak summer season and despite the policy, the airport said it was the busiest in Europe, with 18 million people passing through its terminals.

But July move prompted a backlash from one of its main airlines Emirates, which initially rejected the airport’s demands to stop selling summer tickets, calling it “unreasonable and unacceptable”.

It accused airport of having a “blatant disregard” for customers and said it faced “an ‘airmageddon’ situation due to their incompetence and non-action”, before the Dubai-based airline later agreed to the cap.

Airports and airlines cut thousands of jobs at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and many workers haven’t returned to the industry due to finding other jobs.

Heathrow warned it businesses operating at the airport still needed to recruit 25,000 staff, which it said was a “huge logistical challenge”.

Mr Holland-Kaye called on the government to help with speeding up security checks. He said having access to HMRC data of where applicants had worked for the past five years would be the “simplest thing to help us”.

The government has previously said it has introduced a “range of measures to help process security checks as quickly as possible”, claiming about 97% of accreditation checks are completed in five days on average.

The Department for Transport has said it has provided flexibility for employers to start new staff on certain training courses while their background checks are ongoing.

Despite lower passenger numbers, Heathrow returned a pre-tax profit of £643m in the nine months to the end of September. This followed a heavy £1.4bn loss over the same period last year.

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