Heathrow today revealed that it started planning for the summer peak nine months ago and blamed airline ground handling shortages as the “constraint” on its capacity.
The London hub warned that its capacity cap will remain in place until airlines increase their ground handler resource.
The airport said: “The number of people employed in ground handling fell sharply over the last two years, as airlines cut costs during the pandemic.
“We have been raising our concerns over lack of handler resource for nine months.
“We estimate that airline ground handlers have no more than 70% of pre-pandemic resource, and there has been no increase in numbers since January.
“In the second half of June, as departing passenger numbers regularly exceeded 100,000 a day, we started to see a worrying increase in unacceptable service levels for some passengers; 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.
“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.”
Heathrow added: “The actions we have taken to ramp up our own resources, and the cap we have introduced to keep demand in balance with airline ground handler capacity mean that people travelling through Heathrow since schools broke up on Thursday have had a smooth and reliable journey.
“This builds on the success of previous peaks at Easter and the Jubilee Bank Holiday, when Heathrow operated smoothly while there was disruption at other airports. The airport is busy during peak times, but any queues are well managed and kept moving.”
Heathrow reported a half-year loss of £321 million despite a bounce-back in passenger numbers. This came as it handled more than 26 million travellers in the six months to June 30 against just 3.9 million in the same period last year.
Chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: “The summer getaway has started well at Heathrow, thanks to early planning and keeping demand in line with airline ground handler capacity.
“I’m proud of the hard work everyone at Heathrow is doing which has helped millions of people get away already, and will help millions more travel on their well-earned summer breaks in the weeks ahead.
“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.
“Airlines need to recruit and train more ground handlers; airports need catch up on underinvestment during the Covid years – at Heathrow, that means replacing the T2 baggage system and new security lanes.
“Recent months have shown that passengers value easy, quick and reliable journeys, not penny pinching, and the CAA should be encouraging the investment that will deliver for consumers.”