Heathrow sees better punctuality after passenger cap

UK airport Heathrow said punctuality and baggage handling had improved after imposing a cap on flight numbers due to weeks of travel chaos, but warned that a shortage of ground handling staff was still causing problems.

The airport in July capped passenger departures at 100,000 a day in response to growing flight cancellations and a baggage mountain that had built up at one of its terminals.

Heathrow said it remained loss-making and did not forecast paying dividends to shareholders this year.

The west London airport’s adjusted loss before tax during the first six months of the year narrowed to £321m from £787m during the same period in 2021, largely due to a spike in passenger numbers, to 26.1 million from 3.9m.

It added that it did not expect to pay a dividend in 2022.

Heathrow said the number of ground handling staff had fallen sharply during the pandemic, as airlines cut costs. It estimated that airline ground handlers were at around 70% of pre-pandemic levels and said there had been no increase since January.

“We can’t ignore that Covid has left the aviation sector deeply scarred, and the next few years will need investment to rebuild capacity, with a focus on safety, consumer service, resilience and efficiency,” said chief executive John Holland-Kaye.

“Airlines need to recruit and train more ground handlers; airports need to catch up on underinvestment during the Covid years – at Heathrow, that means replacing the Terminal 2 baggage system and new security lanes.”

“Recent months have shown that passengers value easy, quick and reliable journeys, not penny pinching, and the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) should be encouraging the investment that will deliver for consumers.”

The CAA published its final proposals for the cap on how much Heathrow can charge passengers. It suggested that the average fee per passenger should fall from £30.19 to £26.31 by 2026.

A final decision is expected in the autumn.

Heathrow said it has been raising concerns over the lack of ground handlers for nine months.

Problems included bags not travelling with passengers or being delivered “very late” to the baggage hall, poor punctuality, and some flights being cancelled after passengers had boarded.

“This showed us that demand had started to exceed the capacity of airline ground handlers and we took swift action to protect consumers by applying a cap on departing passenger numbers, better aligned with their resources.

“Airline ground handler performance has been much more stable since the cap came into effect, and we have seen a marked improvement in punctuality and baggage performance.”

Reporting by Frank Prenesti at Sharecast.com