Routes
Right: Schiphol Airport’s passenger caps saw some airlines cease operations from the terminal.
Opening page: ‘Hopeless Heathrow’ was chastised over the summer by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary.
Heathrow Airports’ passenger cap was a result of many airlines not taking “significant action” to help address the challenges facing the industry, according to its CEO, John Holland-Kaye, leaving the airport with no choice but to impose restrictions in order to ensure service standards were met.
“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,” said Holland-Kaye, during the passenger cap announcement.
400,000 The number of
aviation staff that were furloughed, fired or threatened with redundancy during the spring and summer of 2020.
Bloomberg 26
“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.” In August 2022, Heathrow Airport would go on to extend the passenger capacity limit from 11 September to 29 October, noting that the cap had led to fewer cancellations, shorter wait times and better punctuality. In the four weeks leading up to the cap, an average of 40% of flights out of Heathrow were delayed, and 2.7% were cancelled, according to FlightAware. The first four weeks after the introduction of the cap saw the average rate of delay fall to roughly 32% and cancellation drop to 1.3%. Prior to Heathrow’s implementation of passenger capacity limits, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam led the way, announcing a cap of its own on 16 June. Some 67,500 travellers would be allowed to pass through the airport each day in July, rising to 72,500 in August. However, this cap was reimplemented in September, once more limiting traveller numbers to 67,500, while in October it rose almost imperceptibly to 69,500 a day. The reason Schiphol provided for this cap was a lack of security employees to perform the necessary checks on passengers, with the airport trying to ensure the safety of passengers and employees.
“We are taking this measure with an unbelievably heavy heart. Everyone at Schiphol and all our partners want nothing more than to welcome all travellers with open arms, especially after the impact coronavirus has had,” said Dick Benschop, then-CEO of Schiphol, in the announcement of the cap.
“Setting a limit now means that the large majority of travellers will be able to travel from Schiphol in a safe and responsible way.” Benschop would go on to resign in September following a chaotic summer at the airport that saw a deluge of delays and flight cancellations. Other airports beyond Heathrow and Schiphol in the UK and northern Europe also instituted passenger capacity limits. Most notably, Gatwick, the UK’s second-busiest airport after Heathrow, limited airlines to 825 flights a day in July and 850 a day in August, while Frankfurt International Airport in Germany reduced the number of hourly flights from 96 to 88 from July onwards.
Effect on airlines
Of course, these passenger caps not only have an impact on would-be travellers, but also greatly affect the operations of airlines. American Airlines put a halt to flights out of Amsterdam through July, partly as a result of Schiphol Airport’s passenger cap. Similarly, after Dutch authorities asked airlines for help in limiting the number of daily passengers, United Airlines cancelled its flights between Amsterdam and Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia. In the UK, easyJet and British Airways (BA) are among those that have cancelled flights as a result of passenger capacity limits. BA cancelled 629 short-haul round trips up to 29 October from Heathrow alone after the airport announced it’s 100,000 daily traveller cap, while another 5,000 BA short-haul flights from Heathrow, Gatwick and London City Airport were cancelled over the winter period. Meanwhile, easyJet cut an estimated 10,000 flights as a result of these passenger capacity limits, according to a June Telegraph article.
Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
VanderWolf Images/
Shutterstock.com
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