London – London’s Heathrow Airport urged Britain to open up travel to vaccinated passengers after its recovery fell behind hubs elsewhere in Europe, pushing its cumulative pandemic losses to $4 billion.
Heathrow, which before the pandemic was Europe’s busiest airport, said Britain’s travel restrictions were suppressing trade volumes and traveller demand, and government action was needed quickly or jobs would be lost.
Passenger levels at Heathrow were about 20-25% of their pre-pandemic levels, while European airports are already back to about 50%, said Heathrow Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye.
Fewer than 4 million people travelled through Heathrow in the first six months of 2021, a level that would have taken just 18 days to reach in 2019. Recent changes to the Government’s traffic light system are encouraging, but expensive testing requirements and travel restrictions are holding back the UK’s economic recovery and could see Heathrow welcome fewer passengers in 2021 than in 2020.
Cargo volume at Heathrow, Britain’s biggest port, remains 18% down on pre-pandemic levels, while Frankfurt and Schiphol are up by 9%. Britain is losing out on tourism income and trade with key economic partners like the EU and US because Ministers continue to restrict travel for passengers fully vaccinated outside the UK. Trade routes between the EU and the US have recovered to nearly 50% of pre-pandemic levels while the UK remains 92% down.
Heathrow wants Britain to allow fully vaccinated people from the United States and the European Union to be able to travel into Britain without needing to quarantine for 10 days and says that level of opening up would help fuel a stronger recovery.
Holland-Kaye said he was encouraged by a recent pickup as school holidays started. Separately Ryanair said it was seeing strong summer bookings.
Yet high levels of COVID-19 cases in the UK and the government’s track record of ultra-cautious rules for travel – and last-minute changes to quarantine requirements – mean uncertainty continues to plague the travel sector.
For the six months to June 30, Heathrow posted an adjusted loss before tax of 787 million pounds ($1.1 billion), compared with a 471 million loss for the same period last year which was only half affected by the pandemic.
“The UK is emerging from the worst effects of the health pandemic but is falling behind its EU rivals in international trade by being slow to remove restrictions. Replacing PCR tests with lateral flow tests and opening up to EU and US vaccinated travellers at the end of July will start to get Britain’s economic recovery off the ground.” Holland-Kaye added.
