London’s Heathrow airport, Britain’s busiest, noticed its lowest variety of passengers since 1972 final 12 months and suffered wider losses because the coronavirus pandemic slashed demand for enterprise journey and holidays.
Passenger numbers fell to 19.4 million in 2021. Heathrow additionally recorded a pretax lack of £1.79bil (RM10.05bil) for 2021, taking whole losses through the pandemic to £3.8bil (RM21.39bil) as a result of drop in passengers and excessive mounted prices.
Chief government John Holland-Kaye mentioned Heathrow anticipated to satisfy its goal of greater than doubling passengers to 45.5 million this 12 months, though demand could be “quite peaky” and centered on British faculty holidays.
Passenger numbers have been at present 23% behind forecast, however he mentioned there have been indicators of restoration, with the airport seeing a few of its busiest days in two years as households went snowboarding through the faculty break just lately.
“Summer in particular we think will be quite busy,” he mentioned in an interview. “After two years of staycations, people want to get some guaranteed sunshine.”
He mentioned Heathrow was working with airways to scale-up its operations and reopen Terminal Four for the summer season peak.
But whereas outbound tourism had been boosted by the elimination of restrictions in Britain, Holland-Kaye mentioned inbound tourism and enterprise journey remained suppressed, together with transatlantic routes, due to testing necessities in different international locations.
He mentioned he didn’t count on journey to return to pre-pandemic ranges till all restrictions had been eliminated and passengers have been assured they’d not be reimposed.
Heathrow is awaiting the aviation regulator’s last proposals on what it may well cost passengers for the 2022-2027 interval, after it criticised the airport’s plan to lift fees by almost half. Airlines have additionally voiced their opposition.
Holland-Kaye mentioned if the regulator didn’t rectify “major mistakes” in its preliminary proposals, there might be a return to the “Heathrow hassle” of 15 years in the past.
“If we get it right, we can continue to have the seamless journeys that people have been used to, and the price for doing that is less than 2% on the ticket price,” he mentioned. – Reuters
