She felt sympathy for the ground crew, she said, but the experience had only confirmed that she and her husband had made the right choice not to travel this summer. “Maybe next year,” she said. “Certainly not this year.”
Beyond the security lines, which took about an hour on Wednesday, the crowd seemed to disperse, though the troubles for some passengers didn’t stop there.
“If I can avoid traveling and flying, I will,” said Eman Martin-Vignerte, who was waiting for a flight from London to Stuttgart, Germany, which had already been canceled twice, forcing her to leave and return. to the airport. The delays, she said, seemed “like a tsunami.”
“They really need to get the same workforce as before Covid,” she said, adding that she hoped the chaos was temporary.
Even in the travel industry, workers say this summer is remarkable.
“This is the first time I see this situation,” said Tobi Kerstan, a Lufthansa pilot who traveled to Germany from London. “Flying is no longer fun,” says Mr. Kerstan, who has been flying for 25 years. Asked about Heathrow’s cap on departing passengers, he said he wondered how it would be enforced. “Does anyone count the people?” he said, gesturing to other passengers. “I’d say it’s a gamble.”
Low wages for ground staff working for airlines has been a problem, he said, adding that a common cause of flight delays at the moment was the tight timelines for airline staff to board passengers, unload bags, refuel and to clean the plane. “You create an infinite problem.”
