flight chaos
London-Heathrow: Airport manager asks airlines to stop selling tickets
Inside the Queens Terminal: Queues in front of the check-in counters in London Heathrow
© Mark Thomas / Imago Images
Europe’s largest airport pulls the ripcord: Due to the lack of staff, London Heathrow cannot handle more than 100,000 passengers per day. Therefore, the airlines should stop selling tickets.
In the past few days and weeks, there have been repeated short- and long-term flight cancellations at Heathrow Airport. British Airways passengers were the most affected.
There are not enough employees available for many functions in ongoing operations, especially for ground handling. This primarily includes the areas of check-in and baggage handling.
It was only on Monday that airlines had to cancel dozens of flights at short notice due to congestion. About 10,000 passengers were affected, the PA news agency reported. An airport spokesman said the travelers were not entitled to compensation from their airline because they were not to blame for the cancellation.
Airport chief John Holland-Kaye said on Tuesday that Heathrow handled 26 million travelers in the first half of the year – six times more than in the same period last year. “With regularly more than 100,000 passengers a day at the departures, we have had phases in which the service slipped below an acceptable level,” says Managing Director Holland-Kaye.
Limited until September 11th
As a consequence, London’s largest airport is now introducing a limit on the number of departing passengers for the summer months. “We have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap effective from July 12th to September 11th,” the website “Airlive.net” quoted the Chief Executive Officer of Heathrow Airport as saying.
So far, some airlines have reduced their connections to and from Heathrow, but not all. Therefore, the step of limitation has become necessary to ensure passengers a “safe and reliable journey”.
Those: www.airlive.net
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