Since The Start Of COVID-19 Heathrow Airport Has Lost £2.9 Billion

According to its latest results, Heathrow Airport has lost some £2.9 billion since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The airport criticized the UK for falling behind while European aviation seems to be pulling out of the pandemic on the other side.

London Heathrow has experienced losses of £2.9 billion since the start of the pandemic. Photo: Heathrow Airport

While the UK was incredibly slow to initially react to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of travel restrictions, it is now making up for lost time with some of the strictest in Europe. Apart from a handful of “green” destinations, only fully vaccinated brits can avoid quarantine when entering the UK right now.

26% of pre-covid traffic

London Heathrow Airport still has a long way to go when it comes to service recovery according to schedule information from aviation data experts Cirium. Just 5,357 passengers flights were scheduled to depart from the UK’s busiest airport last month. With some 20,392 passenger flights scheduled in June 2019, this represents a fall of 74%. The good news is that this is a 157% increase from June 2020.

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Schedule data actually looks pretty positive as we move towards the future, with near-normal flight levels currently planned for the tail end of the year. With that being said, it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if these numbers were later revised down.

Only a quarter of pre-pandemic flights are currently operating. Data: Cirium

Passengers are down too

According to Heathrow Airport, it handled just four million passengers during the first half of the year, with only two of four terminals open for much of it. To better visualize the numbers, London Heathrow Airport would typically take just 18 days to reach four million passengers before the pandemic.

First-half passengers fell some 75% from 2020. After all, except for a few routes, January to March was largely unaffected last year. This, in turn, led to a fall in revenue of half to £348 million. While the airport’s loss before tax shrunk year on year, its adjusted profit/loss before tax increased to £787 million.

In 2019 Heathrow would’ve reached its 2021 H1 passenger throughput in just 18 days. Photo: Heathrow Airport

A long way to go

While the UK Government has made giant steps forward with relaxing its travel restrictions, many argue that they’re still too strict. Fully vaccinated individuals flying to Germany only need proof of their vaccines to travel and avoid quarantine.

Heading into the UK from anything other than a green list country, a UK vaccination record, negative pre-travel rapid test, and costly day two PCR test are required. While this remains the case, many are likely to be still put off travel, with the airport’s CEO, John Holland-Kaye commenting,

“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. 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.”

What do you make of London Heathrow’s poor first-half figures? Let us know what you think and why in the comments below.

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