Heathrow reports £321m loss after queues and flight cancellations
Heathrow airport has unveiled a £321m adjusted pretax loss for the first half of the year after weeks of lengthy queues and flight cancellations, with passenger numbers back at near pre-pandemic levels.
Britain’s busiest airport said the summer getaway had “started well”, despite recently announcing a daily cap of 100,000 passengers until early September after it struggled to cope with rebounding demand for travel.
The London hub blamed a lack of ground handling staff for recent weeks of travel chaos and lengthy delays for passengers, describing this as the “constraint on Heathrow’s capacity”.
The airport estimated that airlines were lacking about 30% of ground handling staff compared with before Covid, adding there had not been an increase in these workers since January.
“We have been raising our concerns over lack of handler resource for nine months,” Heathrow reported in its results. It added that from late June, as passenger numbers began to soar, it had experienced a “a worrying increase in unacceptable service levels for some passengers”.
These problems included “an increase in delays to get planes on to stand, bags not travelling with passengers or being delivered very late to the baggage hall, low departure punctuality and some flights being cancelled after passengers had boarded”.
Heathrow said the airport was busy during peak travel times, but any queues were “well managed and kept moving”.
Weeks of problems for air passengers have resulted in a blame game between airlines and airports.
On Monday, the Ryanair chief financial officer, Neil Sorahan, criticised airports, saying they “had one job to do”, to ensure they had sufficient handlers and security staff.
Ryanair does not operate from Heathrow, but the airport’s
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