Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Passengers numbers this year predicted to hit 82.4m but airport’s future uncertain, with proposed £6bn sale in doubt
Heathrow is expecting its busiest ever summer holiday season but faces uncertainty over its long-term future as the proposed £6bn sale of the UK’s biggest airport remains in doubt.
The airport said on Wednesday that the summer getaway this year was expected to be “the busiest on record” and promised to have “robust” plans in place to keep the airport “running smoothly”, even if staff strikes held last year are repeated.
Airport says people will be able to ‘travel as normal’ in peak period around coronation despite strike
Heathrow airport has warned that it is still loss-making, even as it continues to be Europe’s busiest airport, welcoming almost 17 million passengers in the first three months of the year.
The airport also said that passengers would be able to “travel as normal” during the peak getaway period around the coronation of King Charles III, taking place on 6 May, despite a fresh planned strike by security staff.
Decision by Civil Aviation Authority comes despite airport having argued for higher fees
Heathrow airport has been ordered to cut average passenger charges by about 20% next year, in a move that could translate to lower ticket prices for travellers.
The decision by the UK regulator the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) comes despite Heathrow having argued for higher fees, which are charged to airlines and are used to fund baggage handling, security and other costs across the airport’s terminals.
More than 5.4m passengers travelled through airport in January, double the 2.6m from 2022
Heathrow airport had its busiest start to the year since before the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in 2020 as travel restrictions continued to ease, according to data published on Monday.
More than 5.4 million passengers travelled through the UK’s and Europe’s busiest airport in January, double the 2.6 million from 2022, Heathrow said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.
Pat Cullen, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, told ITV this morning that there was no point talking to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, if he was not prepared to discuss pay. She said
What I’m saying … to the health secretary this morning, is if you don’t want to speak to me directly about nurses’ pay, we have engaged with the conciliation service Acas, they can do that through Acas, but our door is absolutely wide open and it appears at the minute that theirs is totally shut …
Fundamentally, I need to get to a table and talk to them about pay. This isn’t just me, it’s the 320,000 nurses that voted for strike action … They voted through an independent ballot that we carried out and surely to goodness you couldn’t look at one of those people this morning in the eye and say: ‘You’re not worth an extra brown penny’. In my mind they absolutely are.
I think it’s a very challenging international picture. About a third of the world’s economies are predicted to be in recession, either this year or next.
We’re no different in this country and truthfully, it is likely to get worse before it gets better, which makes it even more difficult when we have big public sector strikes going on at the moment.
Airport vows passengers will not face daily cap during biggest festive getaway in three years
Heathrow airport has said it is prepared for the biggest Christmas getaway in three years and promised that passengers will not have to face a return of the daily cap that was introduced as summer holiday travel descended into chaos.
Europe’s busiest airport, which said last month that on the busiest travel days over the festive period travellers may have to fly outside peak times to manage the festive rush, said it was working on contingency plans for potential strike action over the period.
Airport still has shortage of 25,000 staff and is keen to avoid disruption of summer
Heathrow has said passengers may have to fly outside peak times on some days in the run-up to Christmas to avoid further travel chaos, as Europe’s busiest airport admitted it is still short of 25,000 staff to meet high demand.
The airport, which this Sunday is due to lift the current cap of 100,000 passengers a day that was introduced in July as summer holiday travel descended into chaos, said it was in talks with airlines over the selective cap.
Airline group says demand is strong despite ‘historic challenges’ at Heathrow and elsewhere
British Airways has returned to profit for the first time since the start of the pandemic, with its owner International Airlines Group saying demand was strong despite “historic challenges” still facing the industry.
IAG said that there was no sign of bookings tailing off in the autumn and beyond – in the face of pessimistic forecasts from its main airport base, Heathrow – and that demand for the most lucrative transatlantic routes was continuing to grow.
Planned action by the airline’s Spain-based cabin crew over working conditions will increase disruption for holidaymakers
British holidaymakers are braced for fresh travel chaos across Europe this summer with staff at Ryanair on Saturday becoming the latest to threaten strike action.
As striking airport workers in Paris forced the cancellation of dozens of flights on Saturday and promised more industrial action later in July, Spain-based cabin crew at Ryanair revealed they now plan to strike for 12 days in July.
Department for Transport says accreditation for aviation workers being processed in under 10 days
Ministers battling to dampen the chaos at airports claim security tests for new workers are being completed in record times as passengers criticised “disaster movie” scenes.
Border staff left dealing with backlog of travellers as reports emerge of people fainting in three-hour queues
Delays at Heathrow airport have been described as “unacceptable” by the Home Office, af reports of passengers fainting in queues of up to three hours.
Border staff were left dealing with a huge backlog of travellers, with witnesses saying they had seen people – including a pregnant woman – passing out while queueing.
A new digital “health passport” is to be piloted by a small number of passengers flying from the UK to the US for the first time next week under plans for a global framework for Covid-safe air travel.
The CommonPass system, backed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), is designed to create a common international standard for passengers to demonstrate they do not have coronavirus.
Travel industry pins hopes for an end to 14-day isolation on new two-stage testing scheme at airport, with results delivered in hours
A new Covid test centre is ready to start rapid testing of inbound passengers arriving at Heathrow airport’s Terminal 2, as soon as the government gives it the go-ahead. Arrivals would find out results within 24 hours of being tested, replacing the need for a 14-day quarantine.
More than 13,000 passenger tests a day can be carried out in the facility, launched by aviation services firm Swissport and the Collinson Group, which runs airport lounges. A second test centre will be ready at Terminal 5 by the end of August, and operators say both centres are scalable according to demand.
Here are the main points from Nicola Sturgeon’s press briefing earlier.
I want to give people hope. I think there’s a lot right now that should give all of us hope. It’s been painful, it’s been hard, but we’ve got this virus to really low levels.
But I don’t do my job, I don’t discharge my responsibilities and ultimately I don’t do anybody any favours if I give false hope, or if I get so desperate, as I am to get everybody back to normal, that I forget about the risks that we face, and then I’m standing here in a few weeks and we’re going backwards.
My biggest concern right now is that there are things that all of us can do to keep this under control that we’re all maybe getting a bit lax at doing.
Sometimes one person’s political issue is another person’s very legitimate issue, part and parcel of dealing with Covid. And the fiscal flexibility of the government to deal with the overall consequences of Covid [an issue raised by the reporter] I would put into the latter category.
The all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, which is chaired by the Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, is holding its own inquiry into the lessons to be learnt from coronavirus, and today it has holding its first oral evidence session. Niall Dickson, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS leaders, told the group that NHS managers were very worried about a second wave. He said:
I would say in relation to the second spike issue or something coming, the levels of concern among our members - the people who are leading NHS trusts, who are leading in primary care and all levels in the systems - is very high.
I mean, of course, there’s real concern about winter and the compounding factors there, but also about an earlier spike.
Balpa union calls 48-hour walkout with further action planned for 27 September
The first-ever strike by British Airways pilots is set to start at midnight on Sunday night, leading to the cancellation of hundreds of flights and travel disruption for thousands of passengers.
Members of the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) have said they will walk out for 48 hours in a long-running dispute over pay, with a further strike set for 27 September if the row remains unresolved.