Heathrow airport wants to hire 25,000 people to be fully operational

London’s Heathrow airport, one of Europe’s largest, wants to hire 25,000 people to be fully operational during peak demand, it said on Wednesday after numerous summer malfunctions.

The airport, however, says it does not expect to return to pre-pandemic traffic levels for several years, due to “the global economic crisis, the war in Ukraine, the impact of Covid-19”.

“Although demand is stronger, it has not fully recovered from the pandemic,” continues Heathrow, which has between 60 and 62 million passengers throughout the year, around 25% less than in 2019. The “ London hub” saw “18 million passengers this summer, more than any other European +hub+, although during confinement it has hit us harder than our European rivals,” he comments in a press release.

“A great logistical challenge”

Heathrow says that “its priority is to be able to meet demand at peak times and that for this it needs to hire 25,000 people who have been validated by the government security services, which is a huge logistical challenge,” it acknowledges.

It says “the vast majority of passengers at Heathrow have enjoyed good service this summer”, although the spring and summer break months have been marked by strikes and staff shortages resulting in problems with endless queues, delays, problems with baggage handling and flight cancellations. .

As stated above, on October 30 the airport will remove the ceiling on the number of flights that it had introduced in mid-summer to prevent further failures.

It says it is working on a “targeted mechanism” with airlines to meet demand during the few days of peak demand before the Christmas holidays, raising expectations of a possible return of flight restrictions.

The group says its balance sheet remains “strong” despite losses amounting to £400m since the start of the year “knowing that regulated revenues” from airports – that is, the fees they are entitled to charge airlines, “do not cover [ses] costs”.

This loss for nine months is added to the 4,000 million losses in the last two years, insists Heathrow, in full fight with the British air authorities and the airlines on this issue.