An airline has rejected an order from a London airport to cancel flights to comply with a cap on passenger numbers as the aviation sector struggles to cope with increased travel demand. Emirates accused Heathrow Airport of showing “blatant disregard for consumers” by attempting to force it to “deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers” through the cap.
A Heathrow spokesperson said it would be “disappointing” if “any airline would want to put profit ahead of a safe and reliable passenger journey”. Virgin Atlantic also criticised the airport’s actions and claimed it was responsible for failures which are contributing to the chaos.
On Tuesday, Heathrow introduced a cap of 100,000 daily departing passengers until September 11 in an effort to avoid poor service levels. It pleaded with carriers to stop selling summer tickets to limit the disruption to passengers.
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British Airways announced it will cancel six additional daily short-haul flights over the next fortnight in response to the cap. It has already axed tens of thousands of flights this summer. Many passengers flying to and from the UK’s busiest airport have suffered severe disruption in recent months, with long queues and baggage system breakdowns.
Emirates, which operates six daily return flights between the airport and Dubai, accused the London airport of plucking the figure of the capacity cuts “out of thin air.” In a statement, it said: “Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we should throw out paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance.
“This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands. Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from [Heathrow].” The Gulf carrier said its ground handlers at Heathrow are “fully ready and capable of handling our flights,” which means “the crux of the issue lies with the central services and systems which are the responsibility of the airport operator.”
It stated it would be “impossible” to re-book the number of passengers that would be affected by Heathrow’s cancellation demands. Moving some of its operations to other UK airports at short notice is also “not realistic” as locating somewhere that can facilitate a large aircraft carrying 500 passengers is “not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall,” the airline explained.
The statement claimed the airline was publicly vocal about signals of a strong rebound in travel demand, accusing Heathrow’s management team of being “cavalier” about its customers. It said: “We planned ahead to get to a state of readiness to serve customers and travel demand, including rehiring and training 1,000 A380 pilots in the past year.
“[Heathrow] chose not to act, not to plan, not invest. Now faced with an ‘airmageddon’ situation due to their incompetence and non-action, they are pushing entire burden – of costs and the scramble to sort the mess – to airlines and travellers.
A spokesperson for Heathrow Airport said aviation is “a complex network” and “no-one can operate in isolation.” They explained that staffing for ground handling teams at the airport are at 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, whereas passenger numbers are at 80-85 per cent.
The spokesperson went on: “For months we have asked airlines to help come up with a plan to solve their resourcing challenges, but no clear plans were forthcoming and with each passing day the problem got worse. We had no choice but to take the difficult decision to impose a capacity cap designed to give passengers a better, more reliable journey and to keep everyone working at the airport safe.”
They added it would be disappointing if any airline would want to “put profit ahead of a safe and reliable passenger journey,” noting the cap is “significantly higher” than the 64,000 imposed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.
In December last year, Heathrow said it expected passenger numbers for 2022 to reach around 45 million. It subsequently raised its forecast to “nearly 53 million” in May, and 54.4 million in June.
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