UK's London Heathrow airport has been overtaken by Paris' Charles de Gaulle as Europe’s busiest airport.
Heathrow has continued to witness a downward trend in passengers' turn out since the reopening of the airports after months of lockdown due to the pandemic.
This is the first time Heathrow will be overtaken by another airport in Europe, as it remained the busiest airport before the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Heathrow has blamed the second wave of COVID-19 and government-imposed quarantine for its fall. Saying all its rivals had adopted airport testing as an alternative to quarantine. UK's failure to introduce passenger testing has been responsible for Heathrow's losses.
"Britain had been too slow to embrace passenger testing and was falling behind." It stated.
Heathrow reported about 84 percent fall in passenger numbers for the three months to September as losses for the year to date widened to £1.5B, about $1.9B
"France, Germany, and Ireland have already moved to testing and this is the way to make sure we can protect jobs in the UK as well as protecting people from coronavirus," Heathrow's CEO Holland Kaye said in a statement.
"The government really needs to get on and make this happen before the beginning of December if we are going to save people's jobs," Kaye added.
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