London’s Heathrow Airport Caps Daily Passengers At 100,000

London’s Heathrow Airport asked airlines Tuesday to stop selling summer tickets as travel chaos worsens amid severe staffing shortages. 

“Some airlines have taken significant action, but others have not, and we believe that further action is needed now to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey.

“We have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap with effect from 12 July to 11 September. Similar measures to control passenger demand have been implemented at other airports both in the UK and around the world,” Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said in a statement.

The new limit will be 100k daily passengers through the global aviation hub, and considering the departing seat average of around 104k — this means 4k passengers will be cut from flights daily. 

“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,” Holland-Kaye continued. 

He also said airport staffing and airline pilot shortages are a twin-fold blow for the travel industry, primarily responsible for flight disruptions over the last several months. 

British Airways recently slashed 28,000 flights due to staff shortages. A spokesperson for the airline told The Independent last week that trimming thousand of flights from its schedule will allow the airline to be more flexible and minimize delays and cancelations during the peak travel season. 

Heathrow’s cap of 100k daily passengers and airlines reducing flights appears to be the move to restore confidence in European flying. 

So what happens if this cunning planning doesn’t work and sparks even more travel disruptions?