PHL and LHR have involved American Airlines and British Airways for the enhanced airline-to-airport cooperation. Credit: Rachel Moore / Pixabay.

Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) in the US and the UK’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The aim of the agreement is to apply innovative measures, increase passenger traffic and improve global cooperation for both airports.

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As part of the MoU, both the airports will work to support the airports’ respective government, industry establishments and stakeholders.

PHL CEO Chellie Cameron said: “Heathrow is PHL’s busiest transatlantic route with more than 2,200 annual flights and 455,000 onboarded passengers in 2019. This partnership will help us safely restart travel for our most important transatlantic trade corridor.”

LHR CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “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. 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 UK and US.”

With this agreement, the airports will cooperate to aid in the recovery of the LHR-PHL route and the US-UK connectivity.

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Both airports have also written a letter to the US and UK governments to support the withdrawal of travel restrictions.

In addition, PHL and LHR have involved American Airlines and British Airways to increase airline-to-airport cooperation.

In March, PHL and Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) obtained relief funding of nearly $115.15m from the American Rescue Plan.

PHL handled around 11.9 million passengers in 2020, marking a 64% slump from a year ago.

Meanwhile, Heathrow lost nearly 6.2 million passengers in April, which is a 92.1% decrease compared to pre-pandemic 2019 figures.