Heathrow reports 600,000 cancellations due to Omicron fears

Britain’s Heathrow airport on Tuesday said at least 600,000 passengers cancelled flights during December in response to the surge of Omicron Covid cases and fears of new travel curbs.

The airport also warned that the sector may not recover until 2025 unless travel restrictions were fully lifted.

Heathrow handled 19.4m passengers last year, less than 25% of pre-pandemic levels and lower than 2020’s 22.1m.

Chief executive John Holland Kaye said there was “significant doubt” over the speed at which demand would recover.

He cited forecasts from industry body IATA which suggested passenger numbers would not reach pre-pandemic levels until 2025, “provided travel restrictions are removed at both ends of a route and passengers have confidence they will not return rapidly”.

"There are currently travel restrictions, such as testing, on all Heathrow routes - the aviation industry will only fully recover when these are all lifted and there is no risk that they will be reimposed at short notice, a situation which is likely

to be years away," he said.

The British government has been severely criticised for imposing travel restrictions at short notice, forcing people to take exorbitantly expensive tests or return home early from holidays as countries were added to it’s so-called “red list” of no-fly destinations.

“We are urging the UK government to remove all testing now for fully vaccinated passengers and to adopt a playbook for any future variants of concern that is more predictable, limits additional measures only to passengers from high-risk destinations and allows quarantine at home instead of in a hotel,” Holland-Kaye said.