British Heathrow Airport suffers losses after passengers from the Gulf and Jordan refrain from traveling through it

Heathrow Airport announced that passenger numbers have decreased on routes affected by the British government’s £10 per person electronic travel authorization system.

Heathrow Airport said on Monday that potential transit passengers were choosing alternative routes and bypassing the UK, describing the ETA system as “destructive to our competitiveness at our hubs”.

The airport indicated that it lost nearly 90,000 passengers due to diverting travel routes to and from the seven countries (GCC countries and Jordan) included in the system since it was implemented in 2023, based on the latest ETA data.

Heathrow Airport has urged the British government to review the inclusion of transit passengers at the airport in the system.

The eTA system, which was launched in November last year, applies to overseas travellers using UK airports as a “transit” point on their flights.

The eTA system currently applies to passport holders from the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but is scheduled to be rolled out to the rest of the world in the fall.

It will also apply to travellers from the EU, EEA and Swiss citizens from next year.

Source: The National