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SOLD OUT: Heathrow tells airlines to stop selling ANY flights until 11th September

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The Summer air travel situation took a surprising turn on Tuesday when Heathrow effectively stopped airlines from selling any further seats for flights this Summer.

In an open letter, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said that the airport had realised that it was, effectively, no longer possible for it to offer the level of service it wanted this Summer and that something had to give.

This is especially true for ground handling staff – albeit these are not employed by the airport – which are still chronically below the number required.

Kaye’s solution is to cap Heathrow passenger numbers at 100,000 per day for the Summer period, which they are specifying as ending on 11th September.

This would be fine, except that airlines have already sold an average of 101,500 tickets per day and seats are still on sale.

Effectively immediately, Heathrow has requested:

  • the closure for sale of all flights departing from the airport until 11th September
  • a reduction in the expected passenger numbers from 101,500 to 100,000 per day

Whilst airlines are not legally bound to follow this, Heathrow will respond by forcing airlines to cancel additional flights if they do not do so.

One way or another, only 100,000 people per day are flying from the airport this Summer.

Whilst not discussed in this letter, the airport is also believed to be considering restrictions on checked luggage and, as it did yesterday for same-day rebooking, banning airlines from rebooking passengers whose flights are cancelled, since this does not nothing to reduce passenger numbers in total.

Heathrow tells BA (and other airlines) to stop selling tickets for the Summer period

Here is the full statement:

“The global aviation industry is recovering from the pandemic, but the legacy of COVID continues to pose challenges for the entire sector as it rebuilds capacity.  At Heathrow, we have seen 40 years of passenger growth in just four months. Despite this, we managed to get the vast majority of passengers away smoothly on their journeys through the Easter and half term peaks. This was only possible because of close collaboration and planning with our airport partners including airlines, airline ground handlers and Border Force.   

“We started recruiting back in November last year in anticipation of capacity recovering this summer, and by the end of July, we will have as many people working in security as we had pre-pandemic. We have also reopened and moved 25 airlines into Terminal 4 to provide more space for passengers and grown our passenger service team.    

“New colleagues are learning fast but are not yet up to full speed. However, there are some critical functions in the airport which are still significantly under resourced, in particular ground handlers, who are contracted by airlines to provide check-in staff, load and unload bags and turnaround aircraft. They are doing the very best they can with the resources available and we are giving them as much support possible, but this is a significant constraint to the airport’s overall capacity. 

“However, over the past few weeks, as departing passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000 a day, we have started to see periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable: long queue times, delays for passengers requiring assistance, bags not travelling with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality and last-minute cancellations. This is due to a combination of reduced arrivals punctuality (as a result of delays at other airports and in European airspace) and increased passenger numbers starting to exceed the combined capacity of airlines, airline ground handlers and the airport.  Our colleagues are going above and beyond to get as many passengers away as possible, but we cannot put them at risk for their own safety and wellbeing.   

“Last month, the DfT and CAA wrote to the sector asking us all to review our plans for the summer and ensure we were prepared to manage expected passenger levels safely and minimise further disruption. Ministers subsequently implemented a slot amnesty programme to encourage airlines to remove flights from their schedules with no penalty. We held off putting additional controls on passenger numbers until this amnesty process concluded last Friday and we had a clearer view of the reductions that airlines have made.    

“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.  

“Our assessment is that the maximum number of daily departing passengers that airlines, airline ground handlers and the airport can collectively serve over the summer is no more than 100,000. The latest forecasts indicate that even despite the amnesty, daily departing seats over the summer will average 104,000 – giving a daily excess of 4,000 seats. On average only about 1,500 of these 4,000 daily seats have currently been sold to passengers, and so we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers.   

“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.   

“The airport will still be busy, as we are trying to get as many people away as possible, and we ask you to bear with us if it takes a little longer to check in, go through security or collect your bag than you are used to at Heathrow.  We ask passengers to help, by making sure they have completed all their COVID requirements online before they come to the airport, by not arriving earlier than 3 hours before their flight, by being ready for security with laptops out of bags and liquids, aerosols and gels in a sealed 100ml plastic bag, and by using e-gates in immigration where eligible. We are all recruiting as fast as we can and aim to return to the excellent service you should expect from the UK’s hub airport as soon as possible.”   

Category

General

Comments (290)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • J says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:21

    Always something suspicious in calculating such a round number, and headstrong sticking to it exactly.

    • Sussex bantam says:
      12 Jul12 July 12:31

      TBF. I’d have been more suspicious if they had said 99,437….

  • Comrade says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:23

    Finally! Well done, Heathrow!

  • numpty says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:30

    Can still book flights on BA.com to/from LHR. Granted they want up to £330 one way in economy (plus).

    One to watch and see how the airlines react.

  • Magic Mike says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:38

    Hey Heathrow, how about giving a bit less to your shareholders and a bit more to your employees, you would soon fill the gap.

    Heathrow, a world class joke.

    • G says:
      12 Jul12 July 12:42

      Walsh wasn’t wrong when he was interviewed on Marr (discount Marr) this weekend just gone; most of the ‘chaos’ that the UK is facing is little to do with the airlines; more the ground experience.

    • Rob says:
      12 Jul12 July 12:49

      Heathrow doesn’t employ any baggage handlers, and that is the pinch point.

      Neither, actually, do most airlines except BA.

      So where’s the blame? OK, with BA you know who to blame, but for the rest?

      • ken says:
        12 Jul12 July 13:06

        So where’s the blame?

        If Airlines / Heathrow contract out a fairly essential part of their operational business, then they are to blame.

        Sub-contracting and screwing suppliers into the ground (and by extension their employees) all works very well until suddenly it doesn’t.

        • will says:
          12 Jul12 July 13:16

          So you have covid, and people could be furloughed and the airlines and presumably airports took on debt to cover the fact they had fixed costs which were not being covered by passengers.

          Then furlough ends but travel doesn’t resume due to the testing requirements with no clear time that things would resume or the state of the economy/world when it did resume. What were airlines and airports supposed to do? Keep taking on debt to pay people on the off chance they would come back before they went bankrupt?

          I think we just need to accept that this is a consequence of Covid and it’ll be sorted at some point.

          Unfortunately by the time it’s sorted its possible we realise that we’re a bit worse for ware financially and the travel sector may quickly enter it’s next crisis freshly saddled up with debt from the last one. That’s probably when you see the airlines really struggle to survive.

          • Blair Waldorf Salad says:
            12 Jul12 July 15:52

            “ I think we just need to accept that this is a consequence of Covid”. For covid, read lockdowns. The airport/airline uncertainty was created and sustained by ministerial diktat.

          • will says:
            12 Jul12 July 16:42

            Agreed, and I make no judgment on the UK’s policy towards Covid restrictions and travel, but we did just have a global pandemic and the UK certainly wasn’t the last to lift restrictions on travel and even if it never imposed restrictions the travel industry was still at the mercy of other countries opening up with no firm commitment possible that restrictions would not return.

            It was not an easy problem to plan for unless you had limitless financial freedom to keep staff on the payroll indefinitely.

      • Richie says:
        12 Jul12 July 13:46

        Many airlines have Principal and Agent relationships with their ground handling companies.

  • Lady London says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:39

    Three things occur to me:-

    (1) Is this being sent out because there is a decent contract trail between the airlines, Heathrow and other privately owned commercial providers like baggage handlers, so that Heathrow has realised they can be sued by the airlines for direct losses such as compensation and duty of care costs passengers are entitled to be paid by the airlines for flight delays, cancellations and disappearing luggage?

    As they are all private proft-earning commercial companies, and none of those is a public service nor owned by government any more, then I would expect no protection from airlines having to pay out compensation and duty of care costs to passengers as required by statute. And for airlines to have contracts enabling recovery at least of direct losses such as these, from Heathrow and/or baggage kr ground handlers. Depending if direct contract with these or via their contract with Heathrow. With insurance to cover the extent of remaining risks they are uncomfortable with.

    These are private companies who have failed to provide the passenger what he purchased. There should be very little statutory protection for them against these losses. So they need to manage their businesses including for contingency and risks, have decent contracts and purchase insurance.

    (2) The amount of weaselling in the Heathrow statement not admitting they basically failed to plan their business properly including for risk, and trying to blame European flights, and now taking a rearguard action to limit their losses….is..!!!

    (3) TGLoyalty has it spot on in his comment above. Heathrow and BA used the covid crisis cynically to ratchet down staff pay and benefits involving a lot of staff loss and completely forgot lead times, contingency and possible changed environment to rehire.

    Serves them right.

    • will says:
      12 Jul12 July 13:23

      I’m all for consumer rights and private companies being held to account for their responsibility, but the consumer laws were never really designed to compensate for situations like this.

      Is it not at least possible that there simply wasn’t the information available to the airport industry (to make it easier to refer to all of the components that now make up an airport) in order to plan for it’s return not least down the the fact that it was domestic and abroad government policy around testing and compliance requirements that they were dependant on in order to get back to normal.

      For most involved in travel, they were rightly more concerned with survival than preparing to get back to operations for the majority of Covid and I’m not sure passing large fines onto them is going to increase their chances of survival.

      Most of the industry is much more indebted now than prior to Covid.

      • memesweeper says:
        12 Jul12 July 13:34

        “I’m not sure passing large fines onto them is going to increase their chances of survival”

        Companies that fail to undertake good risk management should be allowed to fail completely — otherwise no company would bother with risk management at all. The fact this is a busy international airport means it will be sold as a going concern to a less indebted newcomer to the detriment of foreign investors who failed in their stewardship of a national asset. Good outcome IMO.

        • JDB says:
          12 Jul12 July 13:52

          Any newcomer would gear up/leverage the asset as well; the economics just don’t work on these infrastructure assets otherwise.

          • Bagoly says:
            12 Jul12 July 19:43

            You have inadvertently encapsulated the issue: greed.

            Just because most of the financial sector has been putting absurdly high valuations on businesses by large leverage since 2008 does not mean that that is sensible. Unfortunately incentives are all skewed so that those who make the mistakes are not the ones who pay for them. This is market failure which requires robust regulation (not nationalisation)
            Just think if the CAA had insisted on financial adequacy which would have restricted dividends and publicly announced during the fire and rehire that they were worried that an average pay below X x minimum wage was reckless and negligent behaviour (which would have made it easier for the airlines to now sue).

          • will says:
            12 Jul12 July 21:33

            You make a very good point Bagoly, and I really do agree with you that we have not regulated markets adequately across the board. Far too many monopolistic positions have been allowed to proliferate under the guise of “free market” when they are anything but and far too many situations have been allowed to occur where the private risk taker extracts the profits and is then not on the hook for the loss (from banks back in 2007 to the energy sector today. If you want to get really mad look at Avro Energy.

            Free markets and capitalism can provide some excellent solutions to problems, it can also return some really stupid problems if it is not kept in check.

            It’s happening right now online, Amazon, facebook, google etc are monopolising areas of the internet which predictably is causing issues and regulation is glacial.

        • will says:
          12 Jul12 July 16:48

          Presumably you’d extend that to all companies during covid, no one should have got bounce back loans, high streets should not have received grants and everyone should have put aside enough money for the anticipation of a pandemic that would shut them down for so long?

          Many companies that did do that incidentally would have struggled to make it to the start of pandemic because the costs that such a fund would have placed would have made them uncompetitive with a neighboring company that did not plan for such an event.

          If you think that companies should be in a position to plan for an event like that (and I’m not saying your wrong, I’m just saying you’d need to regulate for it) if you also think that homeowners should plan for 15% interest rates because that’s also a disaster situation that’s far more possible than most people taking on a home loan are pricing into their commitment.

    • Bagoly says:
      12 Jul12 July 19:35

      Exactly, HAL should be overwhelmed with lawsuits. If they can afford to pay then fine, but they would probably make the company have negative net value, and the assets, the airport, sold off by Administrators to someone who can run it more realistically.

  • the_real_a says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:40

    What a joke. I decided instead of flying this year to get my car Air Con repaired on Avios. (Avios to eBay and a new condenser and socket set arrives within a couple of days). Road trip summer, no sweat.

  • John T says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:49

    Anyone else feel like the world is just getting worse and worse every day? I can understand people’s desire not to have children anymore given the disaster they will be growing up in.

    • Charles Martel says:
      12 Jul12 July 12:55

      That feels a little dramatic given the article is regarding a potential inability to go on holiday. I find rising crime and politicised teachers a bigger deterrent to reproducing but it wouldn’t put me off altogether.

      • Callum says:
        12 Jul12 July 13:14

        Crime generally trends downwards – it’s the perception of crime that is ever-increasing (largely fuelled by scaremongers like the Daily Mail and Priti Patel).

        If your concern with “politicised teachers” is you don’t want your hypothetical children treating others with respect and dignity or caring about society as well as themselves (those are the “big 2” people are normally angry about their children being taught – not sure what your specific issue is though?), that’s easily counteracted by having a vague interest in parenting your children instead of leaving it all to the school!

        • callum says:
          12 Jul12 July 15:57

          I think you’ve proven my point very nicely given overall crime and the vast majority of crime categories are falling – including most violent crime categories. Even the crime you’ve cherrypicked – homicide – is falling, as you yourself admitted (even though you’ve decided to compare it to 1949 for some reason). The “it’s increasing, we’re just not reporting it to the useless police” cop out is also invalid, if you read the link you posted you will see that the rates include crime that isn’t reported to the police.

          I’d love some genuine honesty here – do those crime statistics REALLY show what you thought they were going to show? It seems ludicrous to describe that as “rising crime” – even with your low-crime heyday of the 1940s!

        • Cat says:
          12 Jul12 July 20:38

          👏👏👏 Callum, well said.

      • John T says:
        12 Jul12 July 13:38

        Not to mention we are slowly killing the planet from climate change!

        • will says:
          12 Jul12 July 16:51

          The planet will be just fine, it’s the things that live on it which will not be so fine.

    • StanTheMan says:
      12 Jul12 July 12:59

      It’s an airport cutting 1.5% of its current bookings for 2 months. Not sure that means we should all rush out and buy condoms.

      In 2018 Heathrow averaged 219,458 passengers a day – split between arrivals and departures. So this puts it 10% below those heady days. Some perspective is needed me thinks.

    • will says:
      12 Jul12 July 13:28

      We’ve just been through a pandemic where large parts of the economy shut down, borrowing went off the scale the the money supply was drastically increased.

      I think even the most optimistic person in the world would recognise that there is likely a future price to pay for that, if there isn’t I’d periodically like to be free from my job on 80% pay courtesy of printed money.

      I think the main issue is that successive recent governments have built a public expectation that they take care of any problems without consequence and people are struggling to come to terms with the consequences of actions.

      I personally can’t really see what anyone else could have done to better manage this with the lack of clarity of when travel would open up and the financial burden of keeping staff on for an unknown resumption of travel.

      • Blair Waldorf Salad says:
        12 Jul12 July 15:58

        I agree with this. Governments in their response to covid broke fundamental principles of free commerce. It has shattered expectations. Whether or not you agreed with lockdowns, you have to recognise that.

      • Bagoly says:
        12 Jul12 July 19:37

        Covid and Brexit (preventing staff movement) are the equivalent of Warren Buffet’s tide going out. The greed was always there and is the reason that it has all gone wrong.

    • Brian78 says:
      13 Jul13 July 07:18

      Jeez. Get a grip man.

      People have had the houses flattened in Ukraine by Putin’s mad lackies and you’re having a meltdown about your holibobs being cancelled.

      Incredible

  • TimM says:
    12 Jul12 July 12:53

    Lady London, thank you for sparing us your considered thoughts. Those 3 things that “occurred” are more than enough for me.

    I do agree with TGL, your point 3. Covid has been used by many organisations for making money and to expel senior staff. I wonder by how many years the mean age of cabin and flight crew has reduced due to ‘covid’, for example?

    • Lady London says:
      12 Jul12 July 13:03

      🙂

      • Cat says:
        12 Jul12 July 20:40

        Agreed TimM (and Lady London, obviously). 3 very well considered points from LL, and that last one is especially spot on.

      • polly says:
        12 Jul12 July 22:48

        Yes, your critique is spot on. Personally l appreciate your views. The more the better…

        • Lady London says:
          13 Jul13 July 03:32

          @will and @bagoly summed it up ; @TGLoyalty’s comment was Gold about the staff

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