As per the latest development, London’s Heathrow announced that it would now limit departing passengers to 100000 a day this summer. This move comes in the wake of limiting queues, baggage cancellations and delays, and the airport has urged airlines to stop selling tickets for flights that could be curtailed.

As per the reports, Britain’s busiest airport is struggling to manage the demand rebound after the pandemic. Further, airlines at Heathrow have also responded to a government appeal to cut capacity, whereas the airport added that it needed them to go further. Referring to this, CEO John Holland-Kaye said in an open letter that some airlines have taken significant action, but others have not, and that they believe that further action is now required to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey.

He further added that they have a more difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap with effect from 12 July to 11 September. “This means that some summer journeys will either be moved to another airport or be cancelled and we apologise to those whose travel plans are affected,” he added.

The airport stated that the cap was in-line with limits implemented at other airports. While Netherlands’ Schiphol has already capped passenger numbers to around 16 per cent lower than 2019 levels, Frankfurt has cut flights at peak times from 104 per hour to 94.

Heathrow added that the average number of outbound seats still remaining in the summer schedules was 104000 a day, which is 4000 above its cap, and added that on average 1500 of these 4000 seats had been sold to passengers. As such, they are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers, it added.

Also, British Airways has already cut a number of flights from its schedules this summer due to staff shortages. Heathrow also apologised for long queues and baggage issues which the customers have been enduring in the recent weeks, blaming staff shortages across the whole aviation sector.