Passengers taking too many liquids on holiday, airlines not hiring enough staff and travellers pretending to be disabled are to blamed for the chaos plaguing Heathrow, the airport’s chief executive claimed on Tuesday.
During the first weeks of summer, holidaymakers have suffered flight delays, cancellations and lengthy queues as airports struggle with baggage handling, air traffic control and security.
Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye, speaking on Tuesday morning, partly blamed the hold ups on passengers "travelling with more than they normally would" and people not "checking in all of their makeup" before going through security.
He added that some travellers were following social media “hacks” and pretending to be disabled in an attempt to skip queues.
"Every single lane is open and that’s because we have hired as many people working in security as we had before the pandemic," he told LBC’s Nick Ferrari.
"A lot of them are new so they are taking time to settle in and a lot of passengers are travelling with more than they would normally take. They have got more bags, and more liquids in their bags so that takes a little bit longer."
He added: "You’ll know that DfT regulations are that people can only travel with one, one litre transparent bag, and people tend not to think of makeup as being prohibited from travel, so there’s a lot of education that we need to do with people."
Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, told airlines to cut their flight schedules as staff shortages have left them struggling to cope with the sudden ramping up of demand for overseas holidays in July.
Earlier this month the airport introduced a cap of 100,000 passengers a day until September 11 and carriers were told to stop selling tickets for summer getaways.
While increased passenger numbers have improved its financial standing since the pandemic, the airport reported a £321million pretax loss for the first-half of the year on Tuesday.
Mr Holland-Kaye accused airlines of not hiring enough ground staff and insisted if they increased the number of workers the airport would be able to expand the passenger cap.
"Ground handlers are the backbone of what you think of as being the airport, but they are employed by the airlines,” he said.
"They did a very good job through until the beginning of June, but the demand was just getting too much for them so we had to take action."
When questioned about reports dozens of wheelchair users were being delayed every month because there are not the staff to help them on and off planes, Mr Holland-Kaye claimed some passengers were pretending to be disabled.
"We have seen demand has gone up significantly," he said.
"Some of this is because people are using the wheelchair support to try and get fast tracked through the airport. That is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
"If you go on TikTok you will see that is one of the travel hacks people are recommending. Please don’t do that."
Despite the queues and cancellations experienced by some travellers, Mr Holland-Kaye insisted Heathrow operations were going “well”.
"I'm proud of the hard work everyone at Heathrow is doing which has helped millions of people get away already, and will help millions more travel on their well-earned summer breaks in the weeks ahead,” he said.
