Heathrow tells airlines to stop selling summer tickets and imposes passenger cap until September

Heathrow Airport has told airlines to stop selling summer tickets as it imposed a cap on passenger numbers – a move expected to lead to more flight cancellations.

The new limit of 100,000 daily passengers – which amounts to a cut of 4,000 passengers a day – will be in place from Tuesday until 11 September, the airport said.

Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye said in the past few weeks, passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000, leading to “periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable”.

He said airlines, airline ground handlers and the airport were unable to handle such high volumes.

Passengers have faced long queues, delays, last-minute cancellations, late luggage and luggage not making it on to flights.

Without the cap, Heathrow predicted that daily departing seats over the summer would average 104,000 – giving a daily excess of 4,000 seats.

“On average only about 1,500 of these 4,000 daily seats have currently been sold to passengers, and so we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers,” Mr Holland-Kaye said.

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“By making this intervention now, our objective is to protect flights for the vast majority of passengers at Heathrow this summer and to give confidence that everyone who does travel through the airport will have a safe and reliable journey and arrive at their destination with their bags.

“We recognise that this will mean some summer journeys will either be moved to another day, another airport or be cancelled and we apologise to those whose travel plans are affected.”

Mr Holland-Kaye said delays at other airports were having a knock-on effect as passengers were arriving late, adding to pressures on staff.

“Our colleagues are going above and beyond to get as many passengers away as possible, but we cannot put them at risk for their own safety and wellbeing,” he said.

He said some “critical functions” are “significantly under-resourced”, especially ground handlers, who are contracted by airlines to provide check-in staff, load and unload bags and turnaround aircraft.

“This is a significant constraint to the airport’s overall capacity,” he said.

Staff levels in security are expected to rise to pre-pandemic levels by the end of July – but it will take some time for new recruits to get up to full speed, he said.

The government recently ordered airlines to make sure they can deliver on their timetables and gave them amnesty until last Friday to cancel flights without being penalised.

While many airlines axed flights, Mr Holland-Kayne said more action was needed.

Heathrow said other airports in the UK and around the world have implemented similar measures to reduce demand.

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