Heathrow asks airlines to stop selling seats to ease flight chaos

Bloomberg

London Heathrow is imposing a two-month cap on daily passenger traffic to contain flight chaos, a dramatic response by the UK’s busiest airport to address the struggle with surging demand for travel.
The airport will limit daily passenger traffic to 100,000 departing people through September 11, asking carriers to refrain from selling summer tickets. Current forecasts are modeling for as many as 104,000 passengers a day over the summer, still below the roughly 125,000 this time before the pandemic.
The move comes in reaction to staffing that Heathrow said is not yet “up to full speed” as it rushed to replenish its workforce with new recruits. Some key functions, like ground
handlers for baggage, remain
significantly under-resourced, according to the airport. The hub has been particularly hard hit by the travel disruptions, as a surge in bookings during the busiest time of the year clashed with a mass exodus of workers during the pandemic.
“Our objective is to protect flights for the vast majority of passengers at Heathrow this summer,” Chief Executive Officer John Holland-Kaye said in a release. “We recognise that this will mean some summer journeys will either be moved to another day, another airport or be canceled and we apologise to those whose travel plans are affected.”
Ticket pricing and cancellation data show that Europe is where the turmoil is inflicting maximum pain on consumers, while Asia’s travel industry is still navigating Covid-19 and the US suffers from a shortage of pilots.
Some airlines have already responded, with British Airways scrapping a swath of flights for the summer season. Heathrow said that of the expected 4,000 excess daily seats, only about 1,500 have currently been sold, giving it room to act.
While Heathrow was spared some of the spring chaos, when images of long lines snaking out of airport buildings grabbed headlines, the hub has struggled in recent weeks as long haul travel, in which the international hub specialises, comes rushing back. As a result, baggage has piled up outside terminals due to a shortage of luggage loaders.
Industry group Airlines UK, which counts British Airways and Virgin Atlantic as members, was unsympathetic to Heathrow’s decision.
“It is disappointing that Heathrow, which was forecasting lower passenger numbers and resources required during the recovery phase, has considered it necessary to take this action now to manage these shortcomings,” CEO Tim Alderslade said in an email. “The
vast majority of flights from Heathrow are departing as planned this summer, and carriers will be in contact as early as possible with any customers affected by the cap.”
Passengers have been arriving extra early, causing further chaos. The airport asked customers not to arrive more than 3 hours before their flight.
Capacity curbs across Europe have also caused ticket prices to surge. Deutsche Lufthansa AG has said it will only offer seats in its most expensive booking class for the month of July as it wrestles with the new constraints.
In the UK, last-minute flight cancellations almost tripled in June compared with the same month in 2019, even with fewer flights operated by airlines, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.