Heathrow Trolley Case

Heathrow is expecting another jump in passenger numbers next summer, and the airport already struggles with trolley shortages during busy hours. If nothing changes, Summer 2026 could turn into a full-on “where on earth are the trolleys?” situation.

That’s where my project comes in.

Aim

To model how next summer’s expected rise in passengers will affect trolley availability and to figure out what level of replacement keeps the airport running smoothly.

Given below is a simple forecast based on the data available for heathrow on their website , you can clearly see in orange in 2024 , the population was 7.98 Million and the forecast shows it's gonna keep increasing (Unless we are hit by another life threatening pandemic or zombie apocalypse).

Heathrow and the Airline Community

Heathrow doesn’t make these decisions alone. There is a group made up of all the airlines operating (British Airways , Air India etc) at the airport. They review proposals and decide what they want to co-fund. If something benefits passengers and reduces delays for all airlines, they usually support it.

The presentation was meant to help the analytics team explain the situation to this group so they can request funding for new trolleys.

What I Modelled

I compared a few simple scenarios. Do nothing: availability drops further. Replace a small share: service stabilises with controlled cost. Replace the whole fleet: great availability but too expensive.

Replacing about 30 percent of the fleet before Summer 2026 turned out to be the most sensible option.

(This is just an approach to how I would model the data, it's not based on the actual data)

Final Output

A clean, simple deck the analytics team can present to the airline community. It shows the projected passenger growth, explains the strain on the current trolley fleet, walks through the scenarios, and ends with a replacement plan that makes sense for Summer 2026.

Feedback From Heathrow’s Operations Data Team

I walked the head of the Data Analytics (Operations) team through my model.He shared that Terminal 5 gets the most difficult customers and that shortages hit hardest there. He also told me the presentation was well researched and put together clearly, which was reassuring since this was built purely from modelling.

Research Material Used

I kept the research simple and practical. These were the documents I used while shaping the assumptions and logic:

• Heathrow Annual Reports

• CAA passenger traffic statistics

• Publicly available airport operations and delay reports

• Heathrow customer satisfaction summaries

• Public tender documents related to airport equipment lifecycle and replacement cycles

• Industry benchmarks for trolley loss, damage and maintenance