The rapid spread of the Omicron variant caused at least 600,000 passengers to cancel their flights from Heathrow during December.
The UK’s hub airport said Covid-19 continued to “pose significant challenges” to the travel industry, with Heathrow only catering for 19.4 million passengers in 2021 – less than 25 per cent of 2019 levels and also down on 2020 figures.
Heathrow added that there was “significant doubt over the speed at which demand will recover” and called for the UK government to remove all testing requirements for fully vaccinated passengers.
The airport also said the government should in future use a “playbook” for future Covid variants of concern that was “more predictable”, limits measures to just high-risk destinations and allows quarantine at home instead of a hotel.
Heathrow’s CEO John Holland-Kaye added: “While we all want to see the back of Covid, 2022 will be another challenging year for the UK’s travel sector.
“There are travel restrictions on every single route from Heathrow bar one and travel demand will only recover when passengers have confidence they will be removed and not reimposed at short notice – which is likely to be years away.”