Tim_T

I thought I had read that Sydney airport has suffered similar meltdown with numerous cancellations and bags not being loaded due to shortage of staff

London Dude

I flew FCO-LHR on Friday morning. Although FCO's main terminal looked quite busy it took me three minutes to clear fast track, and then 30 seconds to get through passport control out of Schengen, even though the eGates were offline that day. The BA flight to LHR left on time (and landed early). The experience was just as smooth when I landed (on a delayed flight out of LHR) on Sunday night. There were no queues at immigration, and the luggage was waiting on the carousel, at least for those who had checked in they carry-ons at the gate at LHR at BA's request.

zkzkz

That's because the matter hit the fan at DUB about a month ago. There were photos of thousands of people lined up down the access road waiting to get into the terminal and people missing their flights waiting in the queue for hours and hours. The government resisted calls to bring in the army to run security but I think they finally agreed to do exactly that just as things started to get under more control.

YYZ has taken the approach of not letting people off the plane until there's room for them in the immigration queues. And most recently has started losing luggage and failing to get it back to passengers for weeks.

It's interesting to see which airports had problems first and which developed them more recently. I don't know if it reflects more on the staffing issues or the seasonal travel patterns at different airports or what.

southlondonphil

In all fairness, I don't see Ferrovial et al sending the Spanish Navy to retake Heathrow if it were (re-)nationalised, but yes, they would want paying handsomely/extortionately (delete as per preference) to relinquish control.

lost_in_translation

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...

PUCCI GALORE

They could want all that they like. Clearly they are not fit for purpose - and need to be replaced. I would suggest another path that has come to me - suppose that the airport was handed over to an organisation such a TfL? I'm honestly not sure that Nationalisation is the best step forward but it is clear that something has to happen. To my mind, it is ridiculous that LHR be in the hands of a Spanish organisation, It is a very important part of the national infrastructure. France has Aeroports de Paris - why can we not have The London Airports Authority. I would want it run by a consortium of Businessmen and Public Officials. What we have now is an absolute mess.

I might add that I would instigate a pruning of airlines currently using Heathrow and pack them off down to Gatwick or Stansted. However outside of my own kitchen and bedroom I am entirely without power so none of this will ever happen.

DYKWIA

Good to see MAN has dropped off the Most Not Wanted list...

lon_flyer

Absolutely, but I would go one further - we could have a public authority to run a number of airports across the entire country, giving a consistent level of service no matter which airport you choose to travel from. We could call it, perhaps, the British Airports Authority (or BAA for short).

PUCCI GALORE

The people who brought us different security protocols in the different terminals in the same airport. No, we've done them already thank you Dear. Let's get go down the road and find someone else.

13901

I know a couple of guys in two large (let's say global) ground handling and freight forwarding services. They both look after the EMEA region and are operational managers. In their opinion you have these trends:

• No airport/country is 100% shielded from the mess. As planes triangulate and hit multiple places during the day, if AMS or LHR are having a bad day then this ping-pongs around the continent
• Everything is interlocked, so if for instance their AMS station is fully staffed but Schiphol's security is a mess, then they're impacted
• Overall, those countries where there is a strong social safety net (Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Nordics to a point) are faring better than those where there isn't one
• Airports in highly "mercantilistic" economies are being hit badly. AMS, LHR, the whole of the UK got rid of a LOT of employees and now are paying a massive price
• The other big issue adding to the UK's woes is Brexit. I know that the B-word is a bit like like an alcoholic uncle in the family, but the friend in ground handling told me that, overall in the UK, he's lost about a quarter of his workforce due to Brexit. They've all gone home in Poland, Bulgaria or other Central European countries. Brits don't turn up for interviews, or turn up without understanding what they've applied for, or can't get a security clearance, or simply leave. Hiring non-Brits is impossible as visas aren't being given.
• Looking ahead, there's very little prospective of improving and they are bracing for a very bad Christmas, especially if by some miracle Asia reopens by then.

bisonrav

I have a EU national friend who was accepted for a security role, but failed security clearance on the basis of a three years continuous residency test. This despite having pre-settled status and the gap being quite short. For some reason the CAA can't track whereabouts when outside the UK. It's a bit self-defeating really.

Never Stansted

Have been through MAN a few times over the last few weeks and I actually think they have benefitted from having problems before other airports which focussed the media attention on them and forced them to sort things out. There are far fewer cancellations out of MAN than virtually any other airport, and the few which are taking place are airline-led rather than airport-mandated. I have been very critical of MAN in the past and frankly it’s still a dump in many ways, but the new people they’ve brought in have undoubtedly got to grips with the operational / security side of things quickly.

banana0692

I was looking at booking flights last night for travel next week (didn't see this cap until now), didn't pull the trigger as had to work out some details. Went back today to book flights LHR to BUD and almost the entire schedule is gone, the few remaining flights prices are over 500 pounds now. I tried some other destinations such as WAW and same situation. Looks like BA have closed almost all bookings out of LHR at least for the next couple weeks and anything that is still available is exorbitantly priced.

Jzlerner

It should just be a simple economics problem. This is a known concept: public authorities for control of infrastructure and organisations in general cannot get their act together. It takes years and years for the most basic decisions to be made due to all the bureaucracy. Look at NHS, rail services etc. They may appear fine on the surface but anyone who has to deal with organisations can tell you that they're far from even being acceptable. The other economic standpoint is the free market public sector. The theory of this is that due to competition, if one company isn't cutting it consumers will simply move to their competitors. In theory this means that there will always be suppliers fighting to bring costs down and quality levels up for consumers, otherwise they simply lose their business.

Heathrow is a bit of a strange situation. It's not a monopoly due to the other 5 airports in London but at the same time it receives a disproportionate number of passengers/flights then the rest of the airports in the UK and Europe. Additionally, the free market option where consumers (BA) could pick up and move to a competitor is less than ideal. Say BA were to move 100% of operations to LGW; it would take years and years and billions of pounds. As a result of this, neither state run nor free market options would work efficiently.

In my humble recommendation I would like to see the CAA and/or the government introduce stricter rules and consequences for times like this. I believe there should be fines imposed on airlines like BA when they cancel thousands of flights a week with little to no warning. I would also like to see fines imposed on airports like LHR when they simply are not coping with demand that they knew was coming and were contracted to provide. Unfortunately, these solutions won't help the situation now but I do believe that for future scenarios they would serve as a kick in the backside and a wake up call for the responsible parties.

Regarding the current situation Im still waiting to see how the cap would be split amongst LHR operaters. For example let's say each airline had to cancel 5 flights a day, that would disproportionately affect smaller airlines whilst BA wouldn't even flinch. 5 cancellations a day is a good day for them! On the other hand if it were to be a percentage of airlines flights, BA which operates the most flights would struggle to cope even more than they already are.

If this cap is mandatory and not a request I would expect Heathrow to pay compensation for loss of earnings to BA based on previous years flights sales data from a few years back. I wouldn't see Heathrow putting up a fight to this as they are so clearly in the wrong and blatantly breaching contracts. However, if it is more of a request cap I wouldnt see any reason for them to compensate airlines

Jzlerner

Sorry for the spiel. It's been a long day