The chaos of air transport continues. Heathrow, the largest British airport and one of the main airports in the world, will limit air traffic for two months (from 12 July to 11 September), introducing a maximum limit of 100 passengers per day and asking airlines to no longer sell tickets for summer 2022 due to lack of personnel and the impossibility of managing an unprecedented flow of passengers. The situation in European airports does not seem to improve and the possibility of new restrictions day after day cannot be ruled out.
"Some airlines have taken significant action, but others have not, and we believe further action is needed to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey," said the Heathrow chief executive. John Holland Kaye, explaining that for this reason it was decided to limit the capacity with immediate effect and to stop the sale of summer tickets departing until September.
Reduced or canceled flights and baggage handling in chaos
Despite action taken by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, disruption continues between reduction of scheduled flights, cancellations, baggage handling chaos. Like other European airports, which have been in chaos for several months, Heathrow is struggling to absorb the recovery in demand after more than two years of the pandemic, mainly due to the lack of staff - caused by the many layoffs that occurred during the pandemic - and the new wave of infections, making it impossible for the London airport, as well as for others, to handle the airport's normal passenger traffic, which until 2019 was over 200 a day between arrivals and departures.
Flight chaos: not just Heathrow
Also British Airways has already announced the cancellation of over 10 thousand flights during the summer. The airport of Gatwick, the second of London, said it will limit airlines to 825 flights a day in July and 850 a day in August, from a pre-Covid peak of around 950. KLM e Lufthansa they had announced hundreds of cancellations over the summer.
