A major international airline has accused Heathrow of 'plucking' figures from thin air while refusing to cut its flight numbers.
Emirates Airlines accused the airport of having a "blatant disregard" for customers after it capped passenger numbers to 100,000 departing per day over summer.
The airline said Heathrow now faced "an 'airmageddon' situation due to their incompetence and non-action".
Heathrow announced earlier this week that it was capping its departing flights due to staffing pressures, and urged airlines to help them reach that number.
Emirates has said it plans to operate all its scheduled flights to the west London travel hub this summer regardless.
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"It is therefore highly regrettable that LHR last evening gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, of a figure that appears to be plucked from thin air," a statement from Emirates read.
"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."
Emirates says its ground handling and catering crew at Heathrow was "fully ready and capable of handling our flights", blaming the airport's other services for any issues.
"Now, with blatant disregard for consumers, (Heathrow) wish to force Emirates to deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers who have paid for, and booked months ahead, their long-awaited package holidays or trips to see their loved ones," the statement continues.
"And this, during the super peak period with the upcoming UK holidays, and at a time when many people are desperate to travel after two years of pandemic restrictions.
"Emirates believes in doing the right thing by our customers. However, re-booking the sheer numbers of potentially impacted passengers is impossible with all flights running full for the next weeks, including at other London airports and on other airlines.
"Adding to the complexity, 70% of our customers from LHR are headed beyond Dubai to see loved ones in far flung destinations, and it will be impossible to find them new onward connections at short notice."
The statement goes on to accuse Heathrow of being "cavalier" and chosing "not to act", while it "planned ahead"
"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," the statement read.
"The shareholders of London Heathrow should scrutinise the decisions of the LHR management team."
The cap on passenger numbers at Heathrow Airport will be in place from now until 11 September.
Over recent months the airport has been hit with cancellations, delays and long queues to get through security.
A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Aviation is a complex network and no one can operate in isolation. The network continues to suffer from Covid-related challenges. While many factors have resulted in the delayed flights, misconnected bags, long waits for arriving bags and last-minute cancellations at Heathrow and airports across Europe in recent weeks – a key issue is airline ground handling teams which are currently only resourced up to 70% capacity to serve passenger demand which has returned to 80-85% of pre-pandemic levels.
“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.
"We have tried to be as supportive as possible to airlines and our 100k cap on daily departing passengers is significantly higher than the 64k cap at Schiphol.
"It would be disappointing if instead of working together, any airline would want to put profit ahead a safe and reliable passenger journey.”
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