Americans think London is under atack: Heathrow chief

LONDON: This week the chief executive of the UK’S busiest airport raised the forecast for passenger numbers this year by 16 per cent, to 52.8 million. That is almost two-thirds of the pre-pandemic volume.

Heathrow was the only European hub to see a reduction in traffic in 2021, due to tighter travel restrictions than EU countries. Surely the airport is now well on the road to recovery?

Not so fast, says John Holland-kaye, the boss of Heathrow.

“There is a wave of pent-up demand coming through the airport,” says John Holland-kaye, the boss of Heathrow.

“It’s fantastic to see that.”

More alarming still is Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which is deterring North American travellers from coming into Europe.

“If you look at something like the Gulf war: traffic into Heathrow from North America fell by seven or eight per cent during the Gulf war.”

“We know anecdotally that a lot of North Americans are put off coming to Europe because of war in Ukraine. They think that London is under atack.”

“So the UK, as the biggest inbound source for US visitors, will be more affected than any other market in Europe.

“In the entirely implausible event that I were in charge of Heathrow, I would feel exercised by the scale of cancellations imposed each day by British Airways – the main airline, with more than half the slots at Europe’s most constrained airport.

“I keep a daily tally, and on both Thursday and Friday it was 110 flight sectors to and from Heathrow – conservatively representing 9,000 passengers who should be using the airport.”

But Holland-kaye puts a positive spin on the resourcing problems at British Airways.

Much of the surge in demand is fuelled by people redeeming vouchers, especially with British Airways, and finally going on trips not taken over the last two years.

“We hear anecdotal talk about people taking two or three weekend trips, city breaks, in a month, and then going away on family holidays – making the most of the opportunity to travel,” he says.

“We expect to see that all the way through the summer so that’s why we are raising our forecast.

“But ater the summer we are just having some caution that the reality of the underlying economics are going to start to bite.”

The cost of living crisis in the UK, combined with high inflation and lower growth around the world is the first dampener. Add in soaring prices for aviation fuel and the risk of new waves of COVID-19 in autumn and winter, and the outlook is far from sunny.