Passengers sigh as Heathrow caps numbers to head off ‘Airmageddon’

The travelers’ destinations were varied: a hotly anticipated vacation in Amsterdam, a conference in Ohio, a family reunion in Austria. But to get there, travelers at Heathrow Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, had to navigate long lines, canceled or delayed flights, and crowds. “I’ve never been through this situation,” said Fatima Bergamaschi, who slept in a terminal at the airport on Wednesday after a canceled flight to Brazil from London left her family too tired to book a hotel room. “I love travel, but, nowadays, not so much.” After two solid years of pandemic-induced staycations, travel has come roaring back in Europe, and peak summer vacation season is in full swing. But the return has come with myriad problems as airports and airlines who let employees go during the pandemic are feeling the strain of meeting the recent surge in demand. Long waits to check bags and get through security and passport control have become the norm, with hundreds of flight cancellations reported across Europe. In Britain, the situation has been exacerbated by the country’s departure from the European Union, which has made recruiting staff harder, and by strikes by aviation workers who say they are not being paid enough at a time of soaring inflation. Last month, photographs of luggage piled up at Heathrow Airport circulated on social media, suggesting that arriving at Heathrow was not much better than departing, and this past week, Delta Air Lines said it flew a plane from the airport to Detroit just to deliver 1,000 pieces of stranded baggage. To try to cope, Heathrow followed the lead of other airports, like Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and on Wednesday, it made the rare decision to cap departing passengers at 100,000 a day until September. To accomplish this, it asked airlines to stop selling tickets for summer flights. Story has more.<br/>