JAKARTA - Heathrow Airport, London, England has announced a limit on the number of passengers in a bid to reduce chaos from flight cancellations, queues of prospective passengers to piling up baggage.
In addition, the airport also said it had ordered airlines to "stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers".
The lifting of most of the COVID-19 restrictions that allowed travel to continue, causing the airport to experience a number of problems, such as a shortage of staff including airline ground crew, security and baggage handlers. Strikes were also planned by some workers.
The airport's social media channels were flooded with angry passengers having parted with their luggage, some of whom had only been 'reconnected' more than a week after the flight. Today, passengers were forced to queue outside the terminal as the temperature soared above 30C.
This new measure of restrictions will lead to more flight cancellations, in addition to the thousands of flights that were grounded in recent months.
Affected passengers will not be entitled to compensation, as the reason for the cancellation will be classified as outside the control of the airline.
The new regulations will limit the number of passengers to 100,000 people per day, meaning an excess of 4,000 seats will be removed each day. This comes on top of tens of thousands of passengers whose flights have been cancelled. On Monday alone, Heathrow ordered airlines to cancel 61 flights, affecting about 10,000 passengers.
In an open letter to passengers at capacity limits, Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye, who previously said the problem could last as long as 18 months, apologized again and acknowledged the events at the terminal were unacceptable.
He said the government's move to suspend 'use it or lose it' rules on flight routes had helped by allowing flights to be canceled in advance, but it was not enough - some airlines were still scheduling too many flights, he said.
The policy has led to ghost flights, as most airlines would rather fly empty than lose profitable routes, reports The National News July 12.
The government ordered airports to review their schedules, to give passengers confidence that their travel plans will not be disrupted.
"The new colleagues are learning quickly but haven't hit full speed yet. However, there are some important functions at the airport that are still significantly under-resourced, in particular the ground handler, which is contracted by airlines to provide staff for check-in, loading and unloading of bags. , and aircraft turnaround," said Holland-Kaye.
"They are doing the best they can with the available resources and we are giving them as much support as possible, but this is a significant constraint to the airport's overall capacity."
"However, over the last few weeks, as the number of passengers departing regularly exceeds 100,000 per day, we have started to see periods when services drop to unacceptable levels: long queue times, delays for passengers who need assistance, bags not traveling. with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality and last minute cancellations."
"Our colleagues are trying hard to get as many passengers as possible, but we cannot put them at risk for their own safety and well-being."
Holland-Kaye said that as some airlines had taken action but others had not, it was time to intervene with what he called the 'capacity cap', which runs from July 12 to September 11.
"Our assessment is that the maximum number of daily departure passengers that can be served by airlines, airline ground handlers, and airports collectively during the summer is no more than 100,000," he explained.
"Recent forecasts suggest, despite the amnesty, daily departure 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, so we are asking airline partners us to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers."
He added that the move was necessary to protect the safety of staff and passengers.
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