The point of aviation is to connect the people of planet earth. Heathrow airport aims “to give passengers the best airport service in the world”. It makes money from enabling as many people as possible to fly. So for it to suppress the number of travellers who can avail of its services is one of the strangest aspects of the increasingly weird summer of 2022.
To refresh your memory: three weeks ago Heathrow suddenly imposed a cap of 100,000 departing passengers per day. That is 4,000 shy of the average number of daily bookings to leave the airport during the summer, and more than 20,000 short of the available seats.
