The week has got off to a bad start for travelers in the UK. Thousands can no longer be served at London Heathrow Airport. Dozens of flights will be canceled at short notice. There are no rebookings for the same day – and a cancellation in terms of compensation.
By order of the UK’s largest airport, London Heathrow, airlines canceled dozens of flights on Monday due to congestion. About 10,000 passengers were affected, the PA news agency reported. An airport spokesman said travelers are not entitled to compensation from their airline because they were not to blame for the cancellation.
To justify the flight cancellations, he said that there were many more travelers in the airport than the airport can currently serve. “In order to maintain safe operations, we have asked some airlines in Terminals 3 and 5 to cancel a total of 61 flights from the flight schedule.” The airlines were also asked not to rebook passengers on other flights on Monday.
There have been serious problems at British airports for weeks. The reason is usually a lack of staff – because of the corona pandemic, employees had been laid off, and now a number of jobs are missing. In addition, employees are repeatedly absent at short notice due to infections. There are also technical problems. As a result, hundreds of suitcases and bags were not loaded onto flights at Terminal 3 in Heathrow until the weekend.
“While Heathrow is ramping up its resources and this summer will have as many security officers as it did before the pandemic, airspace restrictions across Europe and a shortage of ground staff at airlines may pose a risk to the smooth running of operations,” the spokesman said. The airport had previously warned that airlines might have to cancel more flights. The punctuality of landings is “very low”.
In the first half of the year, Heathrow had 26 million travelers, six times more than in the same period last year. Airport chief John Holland-Kaye said the airport has seen 40 years of growth in four months.
