Aviation Accessibility

The Heathrow Passenger Forum has a very clear responsibility – to monitor the end-to-end passenger experience from arrival at the airport through to departure.

 As a team of regular passengers and travel industry experts it is our job to focus on every passenger – departing, arriving and transiting - no matter what their reasons for travel.

 An area of the airport experience which receives our constant scrutiny is that around extra care passengers. We do this through regular updates at our quarterly meetings, following up on individual passenger experiences which come to our attention and through ‘deep dives’ into the topic. One of which we held at our latest meeting in June.

 In May 190,000 passengers requiring assistance had travelled through Heathrow. Prior to the pandemic, extra care passengers represented 2% of the total, but post-Covid this figure had risen to 2.84%. Future demand estimates have previously suggested 3% by 2026 but clearly this will be reached much sooner. That’s great news, everyone is entitled access to fly for business, family, holiday, medical - any number of reasons.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has a threshold of 97% for the proportion of passengers within the extra care category to have an experience which is up to standard. That results in the airport being ranked as ‘good’, and 98% for ‘very good’.

In 2022 Heathrow did not meet this target, despite their best efforts, recruitment and training issues hampered their operation.

That resulted in Heathrow being rated as “poor” and “needs improvement” in the CAA’s latest report. You can access the full report which covers other airports in the UK too here

The good news is that the airport has shown improvement since spring / summer 2022. Although it falls outside the period covered by the report, the performance in recent months has shown a further improvement such that it would have received a good rating for those months.

With overall passenger numbers back to pre-pandemic levels so far in 2023 the airport is achieving 96.7% in arrivals. In departures the figure was between 99 and 100% over the past twelve months. That disparity reflects the challenge of arriving passenger demand that has not been communicated ahead of arrival. This can be concentrated on certain routes and Heathrow continues to work on improving this.

As part of Heathrow’s regulatory plan (its funding agreement basically) they have allocated £55 million over the next five years to make the important experience smoother for all passengers.  Focusing on the immediate future the current assistance service recruitment drive which has been running for nine months will continue until September.

Work is also ongoing to identify alternative routes through the terminals to increase the patient to agent ratios; accelerating plans to improve the waiting areas and host facilities; and increasing passenger choice through investment in technology and additional self-mobilisation equipment.

In all our dealings with the senior team at Heathrow we are reassured by their determination to continue the improvement journey and move beyond the CAA ratings. The Heathrow Passenger Forum’s view is that even one bad experience is one too many. Building up capacity and standards is key.

Although our remit ends at the jetway we still take a strong interest in what happens after the passenger departs or indeed the experience up to the point of arrival at Heathrow either on an incoming aircraft or any one of the ground transportation methods.

It is our view that onboard the aircraft extra care passengers should have an experience which matches their requirements and is not compromised in anyway. The CAA recently sought input on the development of an “Airlines Accessibility Framework”. We submitted our views and recommendations. Although the consultation period is now closed you can read the document here

The Heathrow Passenger Forum already has a representative who uses an electric wheelchair and crutches, but we are very keen to increase our knowledge base. If you have views you would like to share or would like to know more about our work with a view to joining us, please email the Chair, Mark Izatt – mark@markizatt.com