The airline Emirates has refused to comply with Heathrow Airport’s request to cut flights and stop selling summer tickets.
Heathrow has been asking airlines to cancel flights in order to keep within a cap on passenger numbers, having set a limit of 100,000 passengers a day that can depart from its terminals over the summer.
Heathrow has set that figure itself, outside of the government’s own amnesty numbers, to bring passengers down by 4,000 per day. This cap will remain until September 11.
Emirates has called the airport’s request “unreasonable and unacceptable”, suggesting that the 100,000 cap had been “plucked from thin air.”
Emirates added that it planned to operate to and from Heathrow as scheduled.
The airline said in a statement that Heathrow had given it 36 hours to reduce passenger numbers in order to help the airport function without further travel delays.
Emirates said: “Their (Heathrow’s) 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.”
Disruption across numerous airlines has affected thousands of UK-based travellers this year, with swathes of flights being cancelled at short notice.
It comes as airports and airlines, which offloaded scores of jobs to rebalance the books during Covid, have struggled to meet demand now that restrictions have been lifted and international travel has resumed.
In the wake of its cancellations call, airlines have accused Heathrow of attempting to maximise profits at their expense, while Emirates has suggested that Heathrow was warned that high summer travel demand was likely and chose not to act.
Emirates said: “The bottom line is, the London Healthrow [LHR] management team are cavalier about travellers and their airline customers.
“All the signals of a strong travel rebound were there, and for months, Emirates has been publicly vocal about the matter.
“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.
“LHR 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.
“The shareholders of London Heathrow should scrutinise the decisions of the LHR management team.”
Photo by Sangga Rima Roman Selia on Unsplash
