Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, on Thursday rejected flight cuts requested by London’s Heathrow airport, which is seeking to relax its flight schedule due to staff shortages amid a resumption in demand.
The main British “hub” announced on Tuesday that it would limit the number of departing passengers to 100,000 per day for two months, 4,000 less than expected, and asked companies to stop selling plane tickets for the summer.
“It is very unfortunate that (the airport) has given us (…) 36 hours to implement capacity reductions”, with a casualty figure that “seems to come from nowhere”, denounced the largest company in the Middle East in a statement press release sent to AFP.
“Unreasonable and unacceptable”
“This is completely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these requests,” protests Emirates, which operates six daily flights between London airport and Dubai. The company “plans to exercise until further notice as planned to and from” Heathrow, it says in its press release.
The airline adds that it would be impossible to put passengers on other flights, as these are full at the moment. He argues that 70% of his clients who depart from Heathrow continue their journey after Dubai and that it is impossible to find them a new connection in such a short time.
British airlines and airports, which laid off thousands of people at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, are now scrambling to recruit.
Companies such as British Airways, Wizz Air or Easyjet have recently canceled thousands of flights scheduled for this summer to stagger their programs with their reduced capacities.
Heathrow said on Thursday that it had “asked airlines for months” to help it develop a plan to deal with staff shortages, but some companies did not play along, criticizes the airport company in a statement sent to AFP. .
British Airways, which has cut a total of 13% of its flights for the summer season, said on Thursday that the limit on the number of passengers at Heathrow was “incredibly disappointing news for [ses] customers, at a time when [la compagnie a] We have already taken responsible steps to reduce our daylight savings time.”
Thousands of flights canceled
But the British company has decided to comply: “we are going to cancel a small number of additional flights (…) and we will contact customers to apologize,” he told AFP.
Like other British and European airports, the London hub has experienced several months of chaos with cancellations, delays, long queues or problems with baggage delivery.
Emirates and the airport pass the buck, and Heathrow says the problem lies primarily with the airline’s lack of ground staff.
For its part, the company denounces “the incompetence and inaction” of an airport that it considers not sufficiently prepared for the return of passengers. He assures that it has been anticipated to a great extent and that its ground services “are fully prepared and in a position to manage [ses] flights”.
The British company Virgin Atlantic assures for its part “to support the preventive measures taken by Heathrow to reduce the disturbances” on the condition, however, that they do not have “a disproportionate impact on carriers”, in a statement sent to AFP.
Source: BFM TV
