Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) announced this week it had signed a targeted Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with London Heathrow Airport (LHR), committing both airports to work together to support the recovery from COVID-19.
“Heathrow is PHL’s busiest transatlantic route with more than 2,200 annual flights and 455,000 onboarded passengers in 2019,” said Chellie Cameron, PHL CEO. “This partnership will help us safely restart travel for our most important transatlantic trade corridor.”
The MoU focuses on boosting passenger numbers, implementing innovative measures, increasing international cooperation and working jointly to advocate the airports’ respective government and industry organizations.
“We have been working closely with PHL over the past six months – exchanging information and best practice supporting the delivery of a safe and secure environment for our passengers,” said John Holland-Kaye, LHR CEO. “We wanted to take this engagement a step further by signing an MoU as we work hard to bring back a safe and meaningful restart of travel between the U.K. and U.S.”
LHR and PHL have also jointly penned a letter to the U.S. and U.K. governments, which supports the removal of border restrictions to reflect the success of the vaccination programs and leads to the safe reopening of travel between the two countries. The two airports have also engaged their counterparts at American Airlines and British Airways to increase airline to airport coordination.
