Heathrow Airport, a crucial global travel hub, asks airlines to stop selling tickets and caps passenger numbers amid travel chaos
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- Major UK airport Heathrow has asked airlines to stop selling summer tickets as travel disruption continues.
- Heathrow CEO said there is now a cap of 100,000 passengers flying per day from the airport.
- Passengers at Heathrow told Insider on Monday about their flight delays and cancellations.
London Heathrow Airport, a key global aviation hub, asked airlines on Tuesday to stop selling summer tickets as travel chaos took a turn for the worse.
Heathrow, which was the busiest airport in Europe until the COVID-19 pandemic, said in a statement that it has introduced a cap of 100,000 passengers flying each day amid mounting chaos at airports and airlines around the world.
"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," Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said in a statement.
"We have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap with effect from 12 July to 11 September."
Daily passenger numbers have frequently exceeded 100,000 and this has resulted in long lines, lost luggage, and flight delays and cancellations, he added.
The maximum number of daily passengers which Heathrow and the airlines there can serve over the summer is 100,000, Holland-Kaye said. The number of daily outbound seats available will average 104,000 over the summer, but only 1,500 of the 4,000 daily seats have been sold to passengers so far, he said.
"We are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers," Holland-Kaye said in the statement.
He added that staff at Heathrow are putting all their effort into making sure passengers fly, but "but we cannot put them at risk for their own safety and wellbeing."
Heathrow and individual airlines had been advising customers to arrive at the airport three hours before their scheduled departure time in case of long lines for check-in and security.
Multiple passengers at Heathrow on Monday told Insider that their flights from the airport had been canceled, some only getting a few hours notice. Of 12 British Airways flights set to depart from Heathrow to Edinburgh on Monday, five were canceled and only one departed on time.
One passenger told Insider that she was only reunited with her luggage four days after she flew into Heathrow, while three others said that they had flown into the airport a few hours earlier and had no idea where their luggage was.
In an investor report in June, Heathrow said that it expected to serve 54.4 million passengers in 2022 – 9 million more than first forecast in December and putting it at around two-thirds of 2019 levels. It said that by the end of May it had already surpassed the total number of passengers it served in 2021.
Heathrow said that in May, 90% of passengers were through security in less than 10 minutes.
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