Heathrow caps daily departing passengers

LONDON - London Heathrow airport caps it daily departures at 100,000 passengers to avoid additional cancellations through the summer period. The airport expects an average of 1,500 passengers per day to be affected by the "intervention" - and blames airlines for not taking sufficient action to help ease the situation.

Heathrow airport holds short at 100,000 departing passengers per day from 12 July to 11 September to cope with capacity constraints that saw flights delayed or cancelled.

"Some airlines have taken significant action, but others have not, and we believe that further action is needed now to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey," Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said. "We have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap."

Heathrow, its ground handlers and airlines can serve a "maximum number" of 100,000 daily departing passengers, Holland-Kaye said. The latest traffic forecasts indicate a "daily excess" of 4,000 seats. "On average only about 1,500 of these 4,000 daily seats have currently been sold to passengers, and so we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers."

British Airways has already curbed its summer schedule - the airline cancelled more than 10,000 flights to adapt to capacity constraints.