London Heathrow capacity cap not affecting Las Vegas flights
London’s Heathrow International Airport imposed a cap on daily passenger traffic leaving the airport, but so far it hasn’t affected nonstop flights between London and Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.
Reid Airport spokesman Joe Rajchel said Thursday that there has been no indication that two daily nonstop flights between London and Las Vegas on British Airways and Virgin Atlantic would be curtailed by the new policy that began Tuesday and runs through Sept. 11.
The airport asked airlines to refrain from selling summer tickets to limit the capacity at the airport to 100,000 passengers a day.
Airport CEO John Holland-Kaye said in an open letter on Tuesday, “We have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap with effect from 12 July to 11 September.”
The capacity cap comes at a time when Reid International is welcoming back international travel in a bid to drive more global tourism.
“We recognize that this will mean some summer journeys will either be moved to another day, another airport or be canceled and we apologize to those whose travel plans are affected,” Holland-Kaye said.
Heathrow, one of the busiest airline hubs as a gateway to Europe, joins other major European airports that have implemented similar caps.
Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam has capped passenger numbers about 16 percent lower than 2019 levels, while Frankfurt, Germany, has cut flights at peak times from 104 per hour to 94.
The capacity cap is in response to flight delays that also have plagued passengers in the United States. Some of the major airlines have attributed delays to bad weather and air traffic control problems, but critics have said the airlines’ failure to schedule crews properly is behind the delays.
Rajchel said Reid keeps no running record of the number of flight delays experienced in Las Vegas, but since the beginning of June it’s believed to be in the hundreds, affecting thousands of passengers.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.