Tag Archives for london heathrow.
According to the CEO of London Heathrow, “The summer getaway has started well at Heathrow, thanks to early planning and keeping demand in line with airline ground-handler capacity.”
Any issues, he says, are the fault of airlines failing to “recruit and train more ground handlers” and fault with the airport lies only in not having enough money for capital investment, but that’s the fault of the global pandemic not the airport itself
London Heathrow airport is capping passenger volumes at 100,000 per day through September 11, against an average of 104,000 passengers at the airport. Peak travel days exceed this number. In fact during summer 2019 volumes regularly exceeded 200,000 passengers per day, and the airport set a record above 260,000 in August 2019. The airport has asked airlines to suspend ticket sales to accommodate these limits.
One week ago the British government announced sanctions against three Russian airlines: Aeroflot, Ural Airlines and Rossiya Airlines. This kept them from selling or leasing takeoff and landing slots at U.K. airports. Russian airlines already couldn’t enter U.K. airspace.
We now know what this means in practice for their London Heathrow slots: Russian airlines don’t just lose the ability to profit from their slots, they actually lose the slots.
Over the last several days rumors became clear that JetBlue would announce Boston – London Heathrow service today, using slots they’ve just leased from Qatar Airways. Well, there’s no announcement yet but they’ve front-run their press release by loading the flights into the schedule. And it’s actually more than expected.
Wait times at London Heathrow immigration hit 7 hours on Monday and a passenger collapsed. An airport executive told U.K. parliament that “police were being called to deal with tensions that flare up as people queue for hours at a time.”
Manual U.K. Covid processing – checking of forms and tests and evidence of booked future tests – is taking so much time that it’s potentially increasing the spread of the virus.
JetBlue first announced they’d be flying to London two years ago. They have a brand new Airbus A321LR with new premium seats to carry passengers across the Pond. And they have landing slots in London.
However it wasn’t the slots they’d wanted. They couldn’t get into London Heathrow, and they weren’t given enough slots to operate their desired flights into Gatwick either. Three hints from JetBlue today – since removed – suggest this may all have changed.
In 1991 I’m Too Sexy was an absolute anthem. Right Said Fred hit number one in the U.S. with their debut single, something no other band has done since the Beatles. I’d call them a one hit wonder but their next single “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” did hit #76 on the Billboard top 100.
But did you know that Right Said Fred is still a thing? And that they’ve released an album as recently as 2017? Perhaps desperate for relevance they’ve taken on a new profile criticizing the U.K. government’s response to the pandemic (fair enough) and also refusing to wear masks during air travel and promoting skepticism about vaccines.
A British Airways flight attendant is now a registered sex offender after peering over a London Heathrow airport restroom stall with his phone in order to “watch a man urinate.”
A couple of weeks ago I called on Centurion lounges to open or at least for American Express to speak to its plans for re-opening. They’ve now done so. American Express tells me that on October 5 they will re-open their Philadelphia and Seattle lounges “with more locations to follow.” They’ve also detailed plans for 5 new and expanded lounges.
The major approaches to ensuring arriving passengers are safe and are not infected all have limitations – so severe that they may not provide much protection at all.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
