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London’s Heathrow airport has asked airlines to stop selling summer tickets as the hub imposes a cap on daily passenger numbers, threatening further travel disruption.
The new limit of 100,000 daily passengers, which amounts to a cut of 4,000 passengers every day, will be in place until 11 September, the airport said in a statement on Tuesday.
The airport also said that new recruits were not yet “up to full speed" and functions including ground handlers for baggage were “significantly under resourced."
It further said the latest travel forecasts show that the airport would have to handle about 104,000 passengers a day over the summer.
John Holland-Kaye, the Heathrow chief executive, said in the past few weeks, passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000, leading to "periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable".
He further said that airlines, airline ground handlers and the airport cannot handle such high volumes.
Passengers have faced long queue times, delays for passengers requiring assistance, bags not travelling with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality and last-minute cancellations, he added.
He said Heathrow predicts that "daily departing 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, and so we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers," he stated.
“By making this intervention now, our objective is to protect flights for the vast majority of passengers at Heathrow this summer and to give confidence that everyone who does travel through the airport will have a safe and reliable journey and arrive at their destination with their bags."
"We recognise that this will mean some summer journeys will either be moved to another day, another airport or be cancelled and we apologise to those whose travel plans are affected," the CEO added.