Heathrow warns UK falling behind Europe as losses hit £2.9bn
The UK’s largest airport Heathrow has wanted that it was falling behind its European rivals because of Covid restrictions on international travel.
Heathrow says it has had losses of £2.9bn over the past six months, as vaccination travel rules and expensive tests continue to delay the airline industry’s recovery.
Passengers are still a fraction of what they would be before the pandemic, and cargo trade levels are lagging behind hubs such as Frankfurt and Schiphol in Amsterdam.
“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”, the airport said in a statement.
“Trade routes between the EU and the US have recovered to nearly 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels while the UK remains 92 per cent down.”
There were less than 4m travellers through Heathrow in the first six months of this year, a level that would have taken just 18 days to reach in 2019, the airline added.
For the year as a whole, it now expects 21.5m passengers to travel through Heathrow, based on demand for summer holidays.
Chief executive John Holland-Kaye said that the airport was beginning to fall behind its rivals due to travel restrictions.
“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”, he said.
“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.”
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