The authorities of the largest British aerodrome ask airlines to stop selling summer tickets to avoid further long queues of travellers, delays and flight cancellations
The huge avalanche of travelers after the paralysis suffered during the coronavirus pandemic and the lack of personnel to deal with such demand, have made Heathrow airport, the largest in the United Kingdom and one of the busiest in the world, unmanageable. Given the successive scenes of chaos that have been observed mainly in recent days, with long waits for passengers, delays and cancellations of dozens of flights, an unprecedented measure has been adopted this Tuesday: setting a daily limit of 100,000 travelers, with the consequent request to airlines to stop selling summer tickets.
The general director of the Heathrow-London airport, John Holland-Kaye, has informed in a statement that the measure will be in force until September 11 and with it it is expected to offer a better service. “In just four months we have experienced the equivalent of 40 years of increase (in passengers)”, he explained, detailing that, consequently, “lately we have seen that the demand exceeds the capacity of the airport, airlines and services ground assistance.
Although the increase in the volume of travelers is unquestionable, especially considering that the industry is still recovering from a fall in travel that reduced UK traffic to just 3% of normal levels at the beginning of 2020 Due to Covid-19, the real problem facing Heathrow is the lack of staff. After thousands of airline and airport employees were laid off in the country due to the pandemic, recruiting workers is proving very difficult.
“We are recruiting new staff as quickly as we can and aim to return to offering the excellent service expected from UK hub airport as soon as possible,” Holland-Kaye promised. Not in vain, the low number of workers to deal with the ‘boom’ of travelers has triggered a lack of control in some critical functions of the aerodrome, such as those related to registration and baggage management.
According to Holland-Kaye, the chaos has been greater “in recent weeks, when the number of departing passengers has regularly exceeded 100,000 a day.” “In those cases we have started to see periods where the service drops to a level that is not acceptable: long queues, delays for passengers who need assistance, bags that do not travel with passengers or that arrive late, low punctuality and cancellations. last minute”, he underlined. On Monday alone, 61 flights had to be suspended at Heathrow, which had been asking airlines since the end of June to remove more flights from its summer schedules, mainly because of huge baggage delivery problems.
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