Heathrow chaos: Air Malta announces new timings for July and August Friday flights

Air Malta on Thursday announced new timings for its KM106/107 London flights to Heathrow airport, citing “terminal congestion issues” which led Heathrow airport to dictate and enforce a new schedule.

KM 106 will be departing at 12.10pm instead of the usual 3.35pm, three hours and 25 minutes earlier than its usual slot.

KM 107 will be departing at 3.30pm, instead of its usual 7.05pm, three hours and 35 minutes earlier than its usual slot.

Both flights operate on Fridays, and are applicable on the following dates:

• 22nd July 2022
• 29th July 2022
• 5th August 2022
• 12th August 2022
• 19th August 2022

In a statement, Air Malta said it was “given the choice to either accept this re-time or to cancel the flight completely with no alternative travel options available”.

Heathrow chaos

Several major airports throughout Europe are experiencing severe disruption in the form of long flight delays, hours-long queues clear passengers through security and cancelled flights.

Among the worst impacted are Heathrow, London and Schipol, Amsterdam, with the former being a traditionally important airport for Maltese travellers seeking to do business, visit family or take a vacation.

Last week, Heathrow airport management shocked airlines and the general public when it asked the former to stop selling summer tickets until mid-September, as the airport was not coping with numbers.

Heathrow is limiting the number of passengers who can depart each day over the peak summer months to 100,000, 4,000 fewer than it is currently handling. The cap on passenger numbers has been set to last until 11th September.

Airports around Europe are widely understood to be struggling to cope with post-COVID travel demand because of the sheer number of staff let go at the height of the pandemic when travel was largely banned or minimal. They are now struggling to rehire during a period of peak travel demand.