London's Heathrow to Limit 100,000 Passengers a Day

London's Heathrow said it would limit the number of departing passengers to 100,000 a day this summer to limit queues, baggage delays and cancellations, and asked airlines to stop selling tickets for flights that could be reduced.

Britain's busiest airport, like others across Europe, is struggling to cope as demand recovers in the wake of the pandemic. Between 110,000 and 125,000 passengers departed Heathrow daily in July and August 2019. Airlines at Heathrow had already responded to the government's call for capacity reductions, but the airport said they needed to go further. "Some airlines have taken significant steps, but others have not, and we believe that further steps must now be taken to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey," CEO John Holland-Kaye said in an open letter published on Tuesday. "That is why we have taken the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap, effective from July 12 until September 11." "We recognize that this will mean that some summer travel will have to be rescheduled to another day, to another airport or have their flights canceled and we apologize to those whose travel plans have been affected," he added. The London hub said the cap was in line with limits imposed at its competitors. Schiphol in the Netherlands capped passenger numbers around 16% below 2019 levels, while Frankfurt reduced peak-hour flights from 104 to 94 per hour. Heathrow said the average number of outbound seats remaining on summer schedules was 104,000 per day, 4,000 above its cap. Of those 4,000 seats, an average of 1,500 were sold to passengers, it said. "We are asking our airline partners to stop summer ticket sales to limit the impact on passengers," he said. British Airways, Heathrow's biggest customer, has already cut thousands of flights from its schedules this summer due to staff shortages. Heathrow on Monday apologized for the long queues and baggage problems customers have experienced in recent weeks and blamed staff shortages across the entire aviation sector.