Christmas 2022 was supposed to be the time when many British travellers could make the trips they had missed out on during the years of Covid. But the UK’s main departure point, London Heathrow Airport, is warning that it may re-introduce a cap on passenger numbers.
How would this work, and what would it mean for travellers?
How has Heathrow handled passenger numbers this summer?
Like other airports, Heathrow has suffered from post-Covid re-growing pains – with long queues for security and passport control, and overstretched baggage handling.
Since July, in a bid to reduce the stress on the system, the airport has said that the airlines must trim their operations to ensure that the operation can cope with the numbers. A cap of 100,000 departing passengers per day was introduced.
While some airlines simply stopped selling tickets for flights, hundreds of flights were cancelled – in addition to the thousands of preplanned cancellations by the airport’s main customer, British Airways.
Technically it’s still summer in the airline world, with the season ending and turning into winter when the clocks change in the early hours of Sunday morning.
That will also be when the current cap on departing numbers from Heathrow ends. No one is likely to notice as passenger numbers are unlikely to exceed 100,000 anyway – until the Christmas rush begins.
What is Heathrow proposing for the festive season?
“We are working with airlines to agree a highly targeted mechanism that, if needed, would align supply and demand on a small number of peak days in the lead up to Christmas,” says the airport.
“This would encourage demand into less busy periods, protecting the heavier peaks, and avoiding flight cancellations due to resource pressures.”
Heathrow is talking to carriers about retiming some departing flights from the morning rush to the afternoon, which tends to be quieter.
What does that mean for people with confirmed bookings?
The vast majority of passengers won’t be affected – but for some it could mean that the departure time is changed.
Although the measure is directed at controlling outbound numbers – it would also affect inbound passengers by changing times,
Any adjustment at Heathrow has repercussions. The flight times are where they are because they interact with slots and connections at other airports.
For example Singapore…
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