Heathrow offers bleak outlook as omicron halts long-haul rebound

Bloomberg

London’s Heathrow airport said passenger numbers are likely to recover to barely half of pre-Covid levels next year as the pandemic continues to ravage long-haul travel markets.
The number of travellers in 2022 is likely to reach 45 million, Heathrow said in a statement. That compares with a record 81 million in 2019, when the hub ranked as Europe’s busiest.
Traffic is being held back as governments reimpose travel curbs, testing and quarantines in a bid to hold back the omicron variant of the coronavirus. Heathrow, whose business is dependent on the inter-continental markets that have been slowest to recover from the crisis, said it’s seeing high cancellation levels among business travelers concerned about being trapped overseas.
November traffic fell 60% from pre-pandemic levels, despite a reopening of US borders for non-Americans early in the month, a step that was expected to provide a major boost. Rising infection rates caused a number of European countries to restrict entry, even before omicron was
identified.
Heathrow, whose biggest carrier is British Airways, attracted 16.3 million customers in the first 11 months, suggesting the full-year total may be fall short of 20 million. That compares with a tally of 22 million last year.