Heathrow warns of potential passenger cap at Christmas

The operator of London’s Heathrow airport has warned of flight limits this Christmas to avoid further travel chaos despite admitting it will be “a number of years” before demand recovers to pre-pandemic levels. The company is considering retiming flights from morning peak time to quieter afternoon slots during the festive period. The plan was designed to allow airlines to shift demand into less busy periods of the day. “We are working with airlines to agree on a highly targeted mechanism that, if needed, would align supply and demand on a small number of peak days in the lead-up to Christmas,” the operator said. It came as the company said that from this Sunday it would lift the cap of 100,000 passengers a day, which it imposed in the summer to avoid severe backlogs in light of staff shortages. Heathrow and other companies working at the site still needed to recruit and train 25,000 workers to meet demand, it added. The UK’s biggest airport has been one of the most pessimistic voices about the industry’s post-pandemic recovery. It said on Wednesday that it expected to handle between 60m and 62m passengers this year, about 25% fewer than in 2019. The airport handled 44.2m passengers in the year to the end of September, more than four times the 10.2m in the same period last year. “Headwinds of a global economic crisis, war in Ukraine and the impact of Covid-19 mean we are unlikely to return to pre-pandemic demand for a number of years, except at peak times,” the airport said. Heathrow expected 2023 to be stronger than 2022, but CE John Holland-Kaye said: “We’re in a much more challenging environment and, when we’re thinking about our financial planning, we have to be realistic about some of the headwinds that we face.”<br/>