British Airways on Thursday started contacting passengers asking them to reschedule their flights amid a row between Heathrow and airlines over the airport’s passenger cap.
Bosses at the west London travel hub sparked fury from travel chiefs on Tuesday after announcing an immediate 100,000 daily passenger limit – a move that will impact tens of thousands of travellers in the coming weeks.
Airport chiefs ordered UK airlines to, ‘stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers’ because Heathrow is already expecting an average of 104,000 daily outbound passengers in the coming months.
Following Heathrow’s announcement, carriers have reportedly been in intense discussions with the airport and flight schedulers in an attempt to cut capacity by up to 15 per cent at Terminals 3 and 5.
And BA has now started to contact passengers due to fly before July 25 if they are able to reschedule their flight. Industry insiders have suggested the company is filleting out flights in order to more easily make short-notice cancellations.
However, MailOnline understands the UK flag carrier has made a ‘small number’ of short-haul and domestic cancellations over the next two weeks to fit in with Heathrow’s passenger cap. BA says it has moved passengers either onto trains or similar flights from Heathrow or City airports.
Today travel expert Paul Charles, who runs travel consultancy the PC Agency, shared an email from BA to customers asking passengers travelling in the next fortnight if they would like to reschedule their flights for free.
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BA said passengers could change their flights to another BA-operated flight on any date within the next 12 months, subject to availability.
Commenting on the email, in a post on Twitter, Mr Charles wrote: ‘I said it would be a summer of stress. BA among airlines operating from Heathrow now asking those travelling before 25th July to consider changing flights, so enabling them to more easily choose which flights to cancel at short notice.’
Meanwhile, Emirates has announced that it will ignore an order from Heathrow Airport for it to cancel flights to comply with a cap on passenger numbers, describing it as ‘entirely unreasonable’.
Virgin Atlantic also criticised Heathrow’s actions and claimed it was responsible for failures which are contributing to the chaos.
But responding to Emirates’ refusal to cancel flights, a Heathrow spokeswoman said it had ‘no choice’ but to make the ‘difficult’ decision to implement a passenger cap and said it would be ‘disappointing’ if any company was to put ‘profit ahead of a safe and reliable passenger journey’.
The new measures, which are due to remain in place until September 11, are part of Heathrow’s latest attempts to prevent a school summer holiday repeat of the chaotic scenes witnessed at airports up and down the UK over the Easter weekend.
The order comes as airports across the UK continue to be hit with disruption today, with pictures showing queues at Heathrow, Gatwick and Birmingham, while an astonishing video shows passengers sleeping on the floor at Stansted this morning.
Daily Mail
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