Passengers at Heathrow will not face major disruption this summer despite an industry-wide international labour crisis that could take 18 months to resolve, the airport’s chief executive has said.
It comes as Gatwick Airport announced it is limiting its number of daily flights to 825 in July and 850 in August to help passengers “experience a more reliable and better standard of service” after a review of its operations.
Travellers at airports across the UK faced significant disruption to flights during a chaotic half-term week culminating in the Jubilee weekend, sparking concern that summer holidays next month could bring similar delays.
John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Heathrow, told Sky News that Heathrow’s passengers had faced only minor delays, and defended the industry against criticism of its failure to cope with the return of traveller demand after two years of COVID lockdowns.
He said: “We should not be surprised at the challenge faced by the aviation industry.
“For two years most politicians and the public were calling for borders to be closed and that has had a devastating effect.
“Across the sector, very skilled jobs have been lost and it does mean that as an industry we are having to recruit people back, train them up again to be able to serve passengers, and that just takes time.
“It’s very easy to slam the brakes on the industry, lead to enormous job losses, but much harder to scale it up again.”
He stressed that this isn’t just a UK-only issue.
“Across Europe, there were 250,000 people employed as ground handlers before the pandemic. Today it’s something like 120,000 employed, so you can see the scale of recruitment that’s required.”
Staff shortages in airport ground services – including…
Source : skynews
