Staffing Shortage Leads London’s Heathrow to Limit Flights

Heathrow Airport in London is limiting the number of departing passengers to 100,000 per day until September and has asked airlines to suspend ticket sales for the summer.

In a message on its website Tuesday (July 12), the airport said the cap on passengers was due to staffing shortages amid rising demand for travel. Last month, Gatwick Airport — also in London — and Schipol Airport in Amsterdam made similar moves.

The three airports are typically popular gathering points for Americans vacationing in Europe. As travel restrictions ease and more people get vaccinated against COVID-19, this summer is seeing many travelers feeling better about taking overseas trips since the pandemic began.

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As PYMNTS noted last month, this summer has seen the rise of “revenge travel,” with people taking trips they were denied in the summers of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.

“Now that we feel that we’re out more and we’re vaccinated and living with this, I think people are now traveling more,” Jeni Mundy, global senior vice president of merchant sales and acquiring at Visa, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster. “We’re excited to get back out there and travel. We’re excited about our summer holidays. We feel like we’ve earned one.”

Heathrow said it had made its decision to limit passenger levels after looking at staffing numbers for check-in workers, baggage handlers, and other staff. The limit will be in place until Sept. 11.

“Over the past few weeks … we have started to see periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable,” Heathrow Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye said in a statement. “Long queue times, delays for passengers requiring assistance, bags not traveling with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality, and last-minute cancellations.”

The airport said that airlines are scheduled — on average — to fly 104,000 seats a day from Heathrow this summer, leading to a daily excess of 4,000 seats.

“On average only about 1,500 of these 4,000 daily seats have currently been sold to passengers, and so we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers,” said Holland-Kaye.

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