Heathrow baggage issues, cancellations and delays - the soaring numbers

Passenger numbers in June this year reached 5,990,385, similar to levels seen before March 2019

Travellers to the UK this summer should brace themselves for disruptions and changes to flight schedules. Reuters

Officials at Heathrow Airport have announced a cap on flights over the summer. Photo: Jonathon Heyward / Twitter

The cap on flights is aimed at cutting huge queues. AP

Airlines were told to stop selling tickets to the west London airport. AP

Uncollected suitcases pile up at Heathrow's Terminal Three baggage reclaim, as British Airways axed another 10,300 short-haul flights up to the end of October. AFP

Lines of passenger luggage lie arranged outside Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport. Reuters

After imposing a daily passenger cap, the kindest thing to say about Heathrow Airport right now is that it is in crisis mode.

Flights are being cancelled with startling regularity, delays are the norm and baggage piles are mounting.

The pandemonium is somewhat ironic given it has been caused by the travel resurgence airport chiefs spent most of the last two and a half years dreaming of.

Ever since UK Covid travel rules were imposed, industry honchos pled with the government to reduce restrictions significantly or remove them entirely, while simultaneously encouraging travellers to get airborne again.

Their wish granted, passenger numbers in June this year reached 5,990,385, a level comparable to that seen before March 2019.

Theoretically, the resurgence should have been music to the ears of Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye, yet on Tuesday, he found himself having to justify capping passenger numbers to 100,000 a day until September 11, as the UK's largest airport sought to get a grip.

“Over the past few weeks … we have started to see periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable,” he said in what constituted less of a statement and more of an understatement.

Take last Tuesday, when only one of the day’s 1,184 scheduled flights showed up on flight tracking sites as operational and on time.

Mr Holland-Kaye must hope this marks a nadir in Heathrow's fortunes, although his mood won't have been helped on Thursday, when Emirates airline rejected the order to cancel flights to comply with the passenger cap.

Though surprising, the passenger curb was not entirely unpredictable: the number of delays to date in the summer months at Heathrow marks a 78 per cent increase from the same period in 2019, aviation data firm OAG reported.

Cancellations are similarly compromised, with OAG figures suggesting an average 3.5 per cent of flights scheduled from Heathrow in the first two weeks of July didn't make it off the ground — a threefold increase on the first two weeks in July 2019. On its worst day in the month, a little more than one in 20 flights were cancelled.

Data from another provider, FlightAware, suggest that since the beginning of June, Heathrow has cancelled 559 flights within a week or so of scheduled departure, which it said marked a 299 per cent leap on the same period in 2019.

Heathrow's domino effect

At an interdependent hub such as Heathrow, when one aspect of the operation goes awry, the effect is akin to pushing the first in a long line of dominoes.

With passengers left stranded due to spiralling cancellations, a passengerless Delta Air Lines Airbus SE A330-200 flew 1,000 items of luggage, whose arrival had been delayed due to technical problems, back to the US.

“Delta teams worked a creative solution to move delayed checked bags from London-Heathrow on July 11 after a regularly scheduled flight had to be cancelled given airport passenger volume restrictions at Heathrow,” an airline representative said on Wednesday.

Baggage issues have bedevilled the airport, with a combination of staff shortages and malfunctioning automated baggage handling systems contributing to the mayhem.

There is only one accurate source of that data, which is the Iata World Tracer Baggage system, and that information is confidential.

However, given the hefty levels of flight cancellations and delays, it is safe to assume the numbers affected run into tens if not hundreds of thousands.

Lines of passenger luggage lie arranged outside Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport in London. Reuters

While Heathrow's troubles cannot be underplayed, it is by no means alone, and IAG data released this week suggested it isn't even in the top 10 worst-performing European airports in terms of delays.

“The mistake all the badly hit carriers and hubs made is clear,” aviation expert John Grant told The National.

“[They] completely underestimated the strength of the recovery [from Covid] and have been scrambling for many months to find resources.”

Mr Grant's prognosis for a recovery wasn't exactly rosy, either.

“Recent actions by both airlines and airports will have a modest impact on the situation and we really should not expect any improvement before the end of the summer programme at the end of October.”

Planned strike action later this summer also looks set to compound the chaos with, about 16,000 British Airways workers likely to join 700 Heathrow Airport check-in staff on the picket line.

Decades of flight: Heathrow through the years - in pictures

Heathrow Airport in London, the UK's busiest, has been a travel hub for decades. Here The National takes a look back at Heathrow through the years. All photos: Getty Images

An Airco De Havilland biplane of the British airline, Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited, about to leave on the company’s inaugural flight from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome, later known as Heathrow, to Le Bourget, Paris, in August 1919

Waterlogged runways at London Airport - Heathrow's original name - one week before it became Britain's main aerial gateway to the US in 1946

The new BOAC maintenance headquarters at London Airport circa 1955

The air traffic control room at the airport's new terminal in 1955

US film star Marilyn Monroe with her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, after arriving at the airport in July 1956

An aerial view showing the runways in 1958

The arrivals and departures board in 1960

A new airport gift shop, selling items by Chanel, Wedgwood and Pringle of Scotland, in 1961

The Queen's Building and the No. 1 Building Europa at Heathrow in 1965

The Beatles leave Heathrow for Salzburg in Austria, to resume filming of the movie Help!, in 1965

Passenger terminal gates at Heathrow in 1966

Keith Granville, managing director of BOAC, holding up a model of the Boeing 747 jet, with the new aircraft hangars under construction in the background, at Heathrow in 1969

An aerial view of Heathrow in 1970

Passengers boarding the first BOAC Jumbo Jet 747 used for a commercial flight, from London Heathrow to New York, in 1971

Passengers going through the departure lounge at Heathrow in 1973

Concorde takes off from Heathrow on her first commercial flight for British Airways in 1976

Men at work finalising the Heathrow Central underground station before its opening in 1977

Queen Elizabeth II passing though the Tube gates at Heathrow Central station on its opening in 1977

An aerial view of Heathrow in 1978

Passengers waiting near a departures board in 1979

Holidaymakers waiting in the departure lounge at Terminal 3 of Heathrow in 1981

British Airways employees protesting at Heathrow in 1984

Passengers and staff observe a silence in Heathrow's Terminal One to mark the beginning of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997

Rower Steve Redgrave at Heathrow with daughters Sophie and Natalie and son Zak after returning from the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games with his gold medal

Spectators watch the last Concorde land at Heathrow in 2003

Fans surround the coach carrying the England rugby team at Heathrow, as they arrived from Sydney after winning the World Cup in 2003

Heathrow's Terminal 2 in 2004

Passengers queue to check in at Terminal 1 of Heathrow Airport during the Christmas 2006 and New Year period

Passengers wait at Terminal 1 on August 10, 2006, after airport security was raised to critical when a terrorist plot to blow up planes in mid-flight from the UK to the US was disrupted by police

Planes queueing to take off at Heathrow in 2007

The new Terminal 5 at Heathrow in 2008

Aircraft at Heathrow Airport in front of the London skyline in 2016

Members of Team GB arrive from Rio de Janeiro at Heathrow, after returning from the 2016 Olympics, which saw Great Britain's strongest performance at the Games in over a century

A composite photo shows planes taking off from Heathrow in November 2016. Forty-two planes were captured between 10.17am and 11.17am and a montage was created from those single images

Items are arranged during an auction preview at Heathrow in 2018. The contents of Terminal 1, which closed in 2015, were being sold

An airline passenger wearing a face mask pushes her bags through Heathrow's Terminal 5 during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020

British Airways employees welcome Olympians returning from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021

Travellers wait in a long queue to pass through the security check in 2022