mirages has rejected an order from Heathrow to cancel flights to meet a limit on the number of passengers.
The airline accused the west London airport of “blatant disregard for consumers” by trying to force it to “refuse seats to tens of thousands of travelers” through a limit on the number of passengers.
Virgin Atlantic also criticized Heathrow’s actions, claiming it was responsible for failures adding to the chaos.
British Airways will cancel six additional daily short-haul flights over the next two weeks in response to the limit.
Emirates plans to work according to schedule
It has already canceled tens of thousands of flights this summer.
On Tuesday, Heathrow introduced a limit of 100,000 departing passengers per day until September 11 and begged the airlines to stop selling summer tickets.
Many passengers flying to and from the UK’s busiest airport have experienced severe disruptions in recent months, with long security queues and baggage system disruptions.
Emirates, which operates six daily return flights between the airport and Dubai, said in a statement: “LHR (London Heathrow) gave us 36 hours last night to comply with capacity cuts, a figure that appears to have been picked out of thin air.
“Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we had to discard paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance.
“This is completely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands.”
It added: “Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as planned to and from LHR.”
Facing an ‘airmageddon’ situation as a result of their incompetence and inaction, they (LHR) are pushing the entire burden – of costs and the struggle to clean up the mess – onto airlines and travelers
The Gulf airline said its ground handlers at Heathrow are “fully ready and capable of handling our flights”, meaning “the core of the problem lies with the central services and systems under the responsibility of the Gulf.” airport operator”.
It stated it would be “impossible” to rebook the number of passengers affected by Heathrow’s cancellation demands.
Moving some of its operations to other UK airports in the short term is also “not realistic” as finding a location that can facilitate a 500-passenger widebody long-haul aircraft “isn’t as simple as finding a parking space in the UK.” a shopping center,” says the airline. explained.
The statement added: “The bottom line is that LHR’s management team is arrogant about travelers and their airline customers.
“All signs of a strong recovery from the voyage were there and Emirates has been talking publicly about the matter for months.
“We planned ahead to be ready 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 to invest. Faced with an “airmageddon” situation for their incompetence and inaction, they are pushing the entire burden – from costs and the struggle to clean up the mess – onto airlines and travelers.
“The shareholders of London Heathrow must scrutinize the decisions of the LHR management team.”
Corneel Koster, lead customer and director of operations at Virgin Atlantic, called for a “measured approach” to tackle disruptions, balancing the need for Heathrow to be more resilient with the impact of stopping people who “really want to travel” from boarding flights.
In an interview with PA News, he said: “We are quite concerned that what they are doing is not being targeted enough.
“It should focus on ‘what are the bottlenecks, how do we solve them temporarily and how do we really get over them?’.
“We expect them to show us the plan on how to get back to 2019 capacity.
“We haven’t seen enough of a plan yet.”
He added: “We cannot give up the summer.”
In December last year, Heathrow said passenger numbers would be around 45 million by 2022.
It then raised its forecast to “nearly 53 million” in May and 54.4 million in June.
Terminal 4 was not reopened until June 14, some three months after the UK lifted all remaining travel restrictions for the coronavirus.
It was the last terminal at a major European airport to resume operations during the pandemic.
Mr Koster said: “Everyone should have prepared for this increased demand.
“If you’re sitting at the table and Heathrow’s voice says ‘it’s not going to happen, it’s coming later, I won’t open my fourth terminal until June’, that’s a planning error.
“They downplayed the question. They should have opened T4 earlier.
“They should have played an even stronger role in the community.”
Airlines had until July 8 to take advantage of a government scheme that allows them to cancel summer flights without losing their future rights to valuable take-off and landing slots.
Commenting on Heathrow’s limit on passenger numbers, a British Airways spokesperson said: “This is incredibly disappointing news for our customers, at a time when we have already taken responsible steps to shorten our summer schedule in order to further narrow down our programme. using lock lighting to minimize disruption, provide security to travelers and help airports manage their resources.
“As a result of Heathrow’s request, we will now have to remove a small number of additional flights from our schedule and will be contacting customers to apologize, inform them of their customer rights and offer options including rebooking or refund.
“We also know that some customers are looking to rethink their travel plans in light of current travel challenges and have introduced policies that allow customers to easily change travel dates, giving them additional flexibility.”