In December, Heathrow had 600,000 people cancel travel plans over Omicron.

Through the whole year, Heathrow only saw 19.4 million passengers going though the airport – this is compared to the 80 million it had in 2019.

CEO John Holland-Kaye commented: “There are currently travel restrictions, such as testing, on all Heathrow routes – the aviation industry will only fully recover when these are all lifted and there is no risk that they will be reimposed at short notice, a situation which is likely to be years away.

“While this creates enormous uncertainty for the CAA in setting a new 5-year regulatory settlement, it means the regulator must focus on an outcome that improves service, incentivises growth and maintains affordable private financing.”

Also commented on the new data from Heathrow, Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Mass vaccination programmes failed to have the desired effect in 2021, in bringing the rebound in travel there had been such high hopes for this time last year.

“The web of rules and regulations which was spun across different countries and regions and swept away, and then spun again as new variants emerged, clearly led to a drop in confidence in the travelling public. The threat of expensive hotel quarantines following a rapid rule change and the risk of being left stranded overseas if testing positive were hardly a relaxing prospect for holidaymakers wanting to get away from it all.”

The US economy added 199,000 jobs in December, missing analyst estimates of an 450,000 increase in Non-Farm Payrolls.

The dollar fell in an immediate market reaction to a report that eluded to a weaker US jobs market than previously expected. The miss also sent global equities lower in the wake of the announcement, although there was only minor selling initially, the drop accelerated after the US session began.

The tepid initial reaction to report could be attributed to the mixed nature of readings including wages and the unemployment rate.

Delving deeper into the figures, the unemployment rate fell to 3.9% vs expectations of 4.2% suggesting underlying strength in the US jobs market, despite a miss of the headlines jobs numbers.

Interest Rate Hike

Today’s release is particularly important for markets due to recent comments from the Federal Reserve on the pace of rate hikes through 2022.

The Federal Reserve are monitoring economic data as they move towards the first rate hike since the beginning of the pandemic.

“The FOMC could begin increasing the policy rate as early as the March meeting in order to be in a better position to control inflation,” said Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard early in the week.

It is unlikely Friday’s jobs number will change the course of the Fed and markets should expect a rate hike in the very near future, possibly the March meeting highlighted by Bullard.

Although markets were unfazed by the Non-Farm Payrolls miss, equities reacted negatively to the prospect of rate hike earlier this week. US equity indices fell, driven by a sell off in tech stocks, following hints that Fed were ready to move on rates.

“The realisation has dawned on investors that the drug of cheap money is set to be withdrawn a lot sooner than first forecast. The minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting indicated the likelihood of an earlier rate rise in 2022, and the starting gun being fired more quickly on a race to offload bonds from the bank’s balance sheet and this data will bolster these expectations,” said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown.

However, the drop in US indices such as the Dow Jones and S&P 500 may not reflect a complete souring of sentiment, more a rotation away from highly valued tech companies into value stocks that will benefit from a prolonged economic recovery from the pandemic.