Heathrow passenger limit may return for Christmas

Pictures taken at the beginning of June of long queues at Heathrow Airport

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.

The airport said passenger numbers were unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels "for a number of years" but it needed to recruit thousands more staff.

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.

John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Britain's largest airport told the BBC the airport wanted to "get back to full capacity as soon as possible".

"We don't want to have a cap at all," he told the Today programme. "The reason for having a cap is to make sure we keep supply and demand in balance.

"It was absolutely the right thing to do over the summer. It meant for the summer holidays people could get away with confidence."

But Virgin Atlantic urged the airport to avoid passenger capacity limits during the Christmas travel window "that would ruin customer plans".

"Virgin Atlantic remains ready to deliver a full winter schedule and we expect Heathrow to do the same," the airline 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.

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

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Heathrow said some 75,000 jobs across 400 organisations operating at the airport had been cut down to 50,000 during the pandemic.

These businesses need to recruit back up to full head count in roles including ground handlers, airline and retail staff to meet demand, it said. There are about 13,000 outstanding vacancies, the BBC understands.

Over the summer, airlines across the UK were asked to cut flights from schedules 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.

The trade body for airlines, Airlines UK, said Heathrow "must ensure" that any new limit introduced in the run-up to the festive period is "justified and has as little impact on traveller plans as possible".

"Going forward, as the UK's only hub airport it must ensure its overly pessimistic forecasts on passenger numbers - exceeded significantly this year - don't leave the airport short on resource when planning for future demand," it added.

Mr Holland-Kaye called on the government to help with speeding up security checks required when airports are hiring staff. 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.