London Heathrow, which is perhaps one of the busiest airports in the world, with over 1300 movements per day on an average, has been feeling the heat of the current CoVid-19 crisis just like everyone else in the world. Long having had a deluge of people coming in every day, London Heathrow has so little traffic now that it is closing a couple of its passenger terminals, and one runway out of its two.
LHR Terminals 3 & 4 closed
As of Monday, April 6, 2020, LHR has closed two out of its four terminals. Both T3 and T4 are closed and their flights have been relocated to other terminals (T2 and T5).
Terminal 3 & 4 had the following airlines operating:
- Aeroflot (T4)
- Aeromexico (T4)
- Air France (T4)
- American Airlines (T3)
- Cathay Pacific Airways (T3)
- Delta (T3)
- Emirates (T3)
- Etihad (T4)
- Korean Air (T4)
- Qantas (T3)
- Qatar Airways (T4)
- Virgin Atlantic (T3)
Some of these airlines have been reallocated to Terminal 2 (The Queens Terminal), used by Star Alliance member airlines. Some others have been moved to Terminal 5, which was almost exclusively used by British Airways till so far. If some of our readers are flying out of LHR, best to check again with your airline about where will your flight depart from, exactly.
LHR closes one runway
In addition to the reshuffle and temporary closure of terminals, London Heathrow is also reducing capacity in terms of their runway operations. LHR has closed one of its runway effective Monday, April 6, 2020, onwards. As per London Heathrow Airport, they have temporarily moved to single runway operations.
London Heathrow will, however, alternate between the two runways on a weekly basis. As per Heathrow,
We can only remain open if we can continue to operate safely and this move to single runway operations will improve our resilience should we see a further COVID-19 related reduction in staffing levels either from NATS or our Airfield Operations colleagues.
Although we are seeing a significant reduction in the number of flights, Heathrow will remain open so that we can continue to play a crucial role in helping to secure vital medical goods and food for the nation, and facilitating repatriation flights during this unprecedented pandemic.
Bottomline
While Singapore’s Changi airport has a long enough timeline on terminal closure, there is no timeline of how long will the terminals stay closed for London Heathrow. As per London Heathrow, COVID-19 is an unpredictable pandemic that continues to have significant health and economic impacts around the globe, including on the global aviation industry. They are doing everything we can to support airlines, keep their community safe and keep Britain’s vital trading links open, but London Heathrow cannot predict when operations will return to normal.
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Thanks for letting us know about Heathrow runway closure.
*Correction in the 6th sentence – T3 & T4 are closed.
They should close a runway to resurface or repair that runway, not just because of slow business. Now’s the time to do repair and maintenance that they normally wouldn’t be able to do because of all of the passengers/flights.