John Holland-Kaye has reportedly received an ultimatum from the government in a letter written by the Director General of the Department of Transport (DfT) for Aviation, Maritime and Security and chief executive of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to request a “credible and resilient capacity recovery plan for the next six months”.
Holland-Kaye has until 12:00 on Friday to ensure that the airport has sufficient staff for security checks and to assist disabled passengers.
Rannia Leontaridi of the DfT and Richard Moriarty of the CAA wrote: “Heathrow and the airlines using your airport need to be confident and able to assure us that you have a plan that can deliver a positive passenger experience by maximizing to allow people to travel, without too much inconvenience and queues, and above all to avoid large numbers of cancellations at short notice and on the day.
“The government and the CAA are concerned that current resource allocation plans are not delivering on this result.”
This is because Emirates airline is hitting back at the “incompetence and inaction” that had caused this so-called “airmaggedon”, according to The Telegraph.
Heathrow had asked airlines to help them by canceling more than 1,000 flights a day and limiting the number of passengers to 100,000 departing per day.
Emirates currently operates about a dozen flights a day from Terminal 3.
Along with other foreign airlines, they complained that Heathrow “gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, a figure that seems to have been picked out of thin air”.
They continued: “Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we had to discard paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance.
“Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate to and from Heathrow as planned.”
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They added: “We have already taken responsible steps to shorten our summer schedule to further slim down our program, using lock lighting to minimize disruption, provide security to travelers and help airports manage resources.”
A Heathrow spokesperson said: “For months we have been asking airlines to help come up with a plan to solve their financing problems, but no clear plans have been forthcoming and the problem is getting worse by the day.
“We had no choice but to make the difficult decision to impose a capacity limit intended to give passengers a better and more reliable journey and to keep everyone working at the airport safe. We have tried to support the airlines as best we can.
“It would be disappointing if an airline, instead of working together, wanted to put profit before a safe and reliable passenger journey.”