In the midst of a dispute between Heathrow and airlines over its decision to cap the number of passengers passing through the airport this summer, British Airways has begun contacting passengers to inquire about their ability to reschedule their flights.
Bosses at the west London transportation hub angered airline executives by imposing a strict daily passenger limit of 100,000 and ordering airlines to cancel 10,000 flights on Monday.
Heathrow is already anticipating an average of 104,000 daily outbound passengers in the upcoming months, so airport managers also ordered UK airlines to “stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers.”
The new measures are part of Heathrow’s most recent efforts to stop a repetition of the chaotic scenes seen at airports across the UK over the Easter Bank Holiday and are scheduled to remain in effect until September 11.
Following the announcement from Heathrow, BA has now begun to get in touch with travelers scheduled to take off before July 25 to see if they can reschedule their flight.
Industry insiders claim that airline is getting ready to empty out flights so they can more easily cancel reservations at the last minute.
However, the airline maintains that the action is being taken to assist travelers who are hesitant to fly due to the travel chaos and that it has already rescheduled in anticipation of Heathrow’s announcement.
In order to comply with Heathrow’s passenger cap, according to MailOnline, the airline has canceled a “small number” of short-haul and domestic flights over the next two weeks.
Instead, passengers have been transferred to trains or similar BA flights from Heathrow or City airports.
It follows an email sent by British Airways today to customers asking those flying within the next two weeks if they would like to reschedule their flights for free.
According to the email, a daily passenger cap has been set by Heathrow Airport through September 2022.
They have thus instructed us to modify our flight schedule in order to decrease the number of travelers utilizing the airport this summer.
We comprehend that given the present travel difficulties, some customers might want to rethink their vacation arrangements.
We want to be as accommodating as we can so that you can change your flights if you so want.
“We have introduced a policy that will allow you to simply change your travel dates via our website if you are scheduled to depart between now and July 25 and you wish to rearrange your flights.”
Subject to availability, BA stated that travellers could change their flights to another BA operated flight free of charge for any date within the upcoming 12-month period.
In response to the email, Mr. Charles, the owner of travel agency the PC Agency, tweeted: “I said it would be a summer of stress.”
One Heathrow-based airline, BA, is now urging passengers planning to depart before July 25 to think about switching flights, giving them more flexibility in deciding whether to cancel at the last minute.
While this is going on, one airline, Emirates, has declared that it will defy a directive from Heathrow Airport ordering it to cancel flights in order to adhere to a cap on passenger numbers, calling the directive “completely absurd.”
The airline issued the following statement: “LHR (London Heathrow) gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, of a number that seemed to have been conjured out of thin air last evening.
They threatened legal action if we didn’t comply, in addition to specifying which flights we should terminate paying customers on.
These requests are completely ridiculous and unacceptable, and we reject them. The statement said, “Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from LHR until further notice.”
Virgin Atlantic also criticized Heathrow’s actions, alleging that it was to blame for malfunctions that contributed to the commotion.
However, a Heathrow spokesman claimed the airport had “no choice” but to enforce a passenger cap and that it would be “disappointing” if any airline were to put “profit ahead of a safe and dependable passenger journey” in response to Emirates’ unwillingness to cancel flights.
On a day when the airport is chaotic:
Emirates announced that it would defy Heathrow Airport’s request that it and other airlines cancel flights in order to comply with the airport’s new passenger cap;
It happened after Heathrow officials imposed a daily passenger cap of 100,000 until September and required airlines to cancel 10,000 flights;
Despite Emirates’ protests, BA has begun contacting customers to see if they can modify their flights before July 25 so that they can start rescheduling in order to comply with Heathrow’s requirements;
Today, Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham, and Manchester airports all had lines of passengers;
In the meantime, shocking video depicts travelers at Stansted Airport dozing off on the ground while they wait for their aircraft;
Due to a luggage backlog, American airline Delta Air Lines sent a jet to Heathrow to retrieve 1,000 lost bags that were left there;
Garry Wilson, CEO of EasyJet Holidays, told the BBC that his company has done “all in its power” to avoid flight cancellations and strengthen the resiliency of their scheduling;
More than 4,000 flights were canceled by the low-cost airline in the three months leading up to the end of June in an effort to avoid a repeat of the tumultuous scenes saw at airports over the Easter Holidays;
A number of famous people, including broadcaster Richard Osman, vented on Twitter about misplaced luggage, and Waterloo Road actress Angela Griffin said that she had endured multiple delays at the Passport Office while waiting 10 weeks for a passport.
Aviation is a complex network, and nobody can function alone, according to a Heathrow official.
The difficulties caused by Covid continue to affect the network.
“While many factors have contributed to the delayed flights, misconnected bags, lengthy waits for arriving bags, and last-minute cancellations at Heathrow and airports throughout Europe in recent weeks, a key issue is airline ground-handling teams that are currently only resourced up to 70% capacity to serve passenger demand that has returned to 80-85% of pre-pandemic levels,” says the report.
We have been requesting assistance from airlines in developing a strategy to address their resource problems for months, but no specific plans were provided, and as each day went by, the issue grew worse.
We were forced to make the challenging choice to impose a capacity cap in order to provide passengers with a better, more dependable flight and to ensure the safety of all airport staff.
“We have made every effort to support airlines, and our 100,000 daily departure passenger cap is much larger than Schiphol’s 64,000 daily departure passenger cap” (in Amsterdam).
It would be upsetting if an airline decided to prioritize profit over providing a reliable and safe travel experience.
While an easyJet boss blamed airports, an American airline sent an empty jet to the UK to return hundreds of missing luggage caught up in Britain’s travel mayhem.
Due to a luggage backlog at the west London transport hub, Delta Air Lines despatched the Airbus SE A330-200 to Heathrow Airport last night to retrieve the bags.
The bottleneck began earlier this month when a technical issue caused thousands of bags to pile up outside Terminal 2, leading some to refer to it as a “sea of luggage.”
‘Delta personnel found a unique solution to move delayed checked bags from London-Heathrow on July 11, when a regularly planned flight had to be cancelled due to airport passenger volume constraints at Heathrow,’ the spokesman for Delta continued.
‘Delta flight 9888 from Heathrow to Delta’s headquarters in Detroit flew 1,000 luggage back to the US, where crews sent the baggage to our customers,’ the airline stated.
It comes as EasyJet Holidays CEO Garry Wilson said that the airline has taken “every step within its power” to avoid flight cancellations and strengthen the resilience of its scheduling.
In an effort to avoid a repeat of the chaotic airport scenes seen over the Easter Holidays, the low-cost airline cancelled more than 4,000 flights in the three months leading up to the end of June.
We’ve done all within our power to assure system resilience, Mr. Wilson told the BBC.
There could be further issues, such as infrastructural issues at airports or delays in air traffic control.
The disorderly scenes at airports have been attributed to travel agencies.
Following the relaxation of Covid restrictions earlier this year, airlines and airports have been accused of failing to adequately prepare for the resumption of foreign travel.
However, airlines and airports have retaliated by blaming the government, claiming that by refusing to extend the Covid furlough scheme for holiday corporations until all travel restrictions had been eased, the government forced businesses to undertake job losses.
Mr. Wilson denied the allegation that EasyJet had not made adequate preparations for the summer.
No, I believe we did all the appropriate actions given the knowledge we had at the time, he answered.
We increased our system resilience as soon as we became aware of the strain by booking flights.
At least 91,500 passengers will have their plans disrupted this summer as a result of Heathrow management’s announcement of a previously unheard-of daily flight cap as airport instability continues to damage UK travelers.
Heathrow instructed airlines to cancel 10,000 flights on Monday as a result of the 100,000 daily cap going into force yesterday. The restrictions will be in place until September 11.
Heathrow previously anticipated an average of 104,000 daily departure passengers in the upcoming months, so airport managers also ordered UK airlines to “stop selling summer tickets to reduce the impact on customers.”
But one airline, Emirates, has said it will defy a directive from Heathrow Airport ordering it to cancel flights in order to adhere to a cap on passenger numbers, calling the directive “completely absurd.”
The airline issued the following statement: “LHR (London Heathrow) gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, of a number that seemed to have been conjured out of thin air last evening.
They threatened legal action if we didn’t comply, in addition to specifying which flights we should terminate paying customers on.
These requests are completely ridiculous and unacceptable, and we reject them.
The statement said, “Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from LHR until further notice.”
There were lines at Heathrow, Birmingham, Gatwick, and Manchester airports today, less than a fortnight before the start of the state school summer break for the majority of families.
Additionally, a startling ideo captured this morning shows dozens of travelers lying on the ground at Stansted Airport while they wait for their flights.
One parent revealed that he has been fighting for 14 weeks to secure a passport for his eight-year-old daughter in order to take her on her first international vacation as the separate issue with delays at the Passport Office today continued.
However, not just Britons must deal with the transport congestion.
On the eighth day of a strike by Ryanair’s Spanish crews over working conditions, hundreds of customers in Spain experienced delays and cancellations yesterday.
In addition, amid turmoil at airports throughout the continent, Lufthansa, a German airline, stated it would cancel 2,000 more flights, most of which were domestic.
The flight comes after Heathrow instructed airlines to stop marketing summer tickets as airports all over the UK struggle with a staffing shortage in the aviation industry and offer their sincere apologies to passengers for the lengthy lines and baggage problems that have been troubling vacationers for weeks.
The extraordinary action places a cap on the number of travelers who can depart the airport up until September 11th.
In addition to the thousands of flights canceled in recent months, it will result in additional cancellations.
As the cause of the cancellations will be deemed to be outside the control of airlines, impacted customers will not be eligible for compensation.
When managers found it difficult to hire enough staff due to severe labor shortages in the UK during the pandemic, the airport first descended into pandemonium in March.
Due to a lack of staff, there are now mountains of unclaimed bags next to the baggage belts and customers must wait weeks to reunite with their clothing and other essentials.
Industry data released yesterday revealed that Britain is the main European nation with the second-highest rate of airline cancellations.
Only Germany has experienced a greater percentage of passenger flight cancellations this year, at 2%. Italy dropped 1.1% and France lost 1.5%.
Late in February, when more than 5.5% of UK services were canceled, the crisis was at its worst. At the beginning of this month, it was 3%.
According to data compiled by travel intelligence company OAG, the likelihood of a flight being canceled in 2022 is 2.5 times more than it would be in 2019.
British Airways has canceled the most flights to the UK (3.5%), more than 12 times as many as cheap competitor Ryanair (0.3%), which was the top-performing major airline globally. EasyJet reduced costs by 2.8%.
Stansted, the top-performing UK hub, with a cancellation rate that was ten times lower than Gatwick, the poorest airport.
Compared to Stansted’s 0.3%, more than 3% of flights from Gatwick were cancelled.
The West Sussex airport had its worst month of the year in June, with one out of every 14 flights failing to take off.
The majority were flights operated by EasyJet, which this summer eliminated more than 10,000 services.
This summer, BA, which also uses Gatwick but primarily flies into and out of Heathrow, has canceled more than 30,000 flights.
The report, which covers the period from January 1 to July 10, excludes the 10,300 flights BA canceled last week for later this summer.
In an effort to prevent the chaotic situations observed in recent months, such as last-minute cancellations and lengthy lines at check-in counters and baggage collecting halls, both Gatwick and Heathrow have capped departures.
Due in part to a competitive labor market and difficulties in attracting and retaining employees, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye has warned that disruption may last up to 18 months.
It comes as the new airport director of the UK issued a warning today saying he cannot guarantee customers a “wonderful” experience” this summer due to lines, delays, and cancellations.
The managing director of Manchester Airport, Chris Woodroofe, stated that he anticipates “the vast majority” of travelers to have a comfortable experience over the holiday season, but he also acknowledged that he is still having trouble filling positions, which means there will be longer lines, sometimes outside of departures.
There will be instances where that doesn’t happen, and I apologize in advance, he said, adding that the majority of people will “go through security in 30 minutes, hop on their plane, and fly away.”
We want everyone to move on, so that’s a sad thing that happened.
The aviation sector must now make a significant effort to rehabilitate after Covid.
Airports, airlines, ground handlers, and border control are included. These organizations are all putting forth their largest recruitment campaign to date.
The truth is that we are still hiring.
According to Cyrus Dana, the head of security at Gatwick Airport, they want to keep employing through 2023.
He told the BBC that joining a line outside of the departure area would only happen on extremely rare instances over the impending summer vacation.
However, I can encourage people to consider that the line will thin out very fast,’ he said, adding that he was still certain that 90% of people will pass through security in ten minutes.
A representative for Gatwick indicated that capacity expansion would be done carefully.
Storms were to blame for the disruption in February, when one in every seven of BA’s flights were canceled in a single week. Additionally, it experienced an IT issue around the end of March.
Airlines laid off a lot of workers when we entered Covid, according to John Grant, chief analyst at OAG.
“Those employees found jobs elsewhere during that two-year furlough period, and they haven’t come back to the industry.”
Their security policies will have lapsed for individuals who have returned.
They must undergo the same examination and procedure that they did two years earlier.
Celebrities also seem to have been caught up in the chaos at the same time.
In an effort to let BA know about the theft of a makeup artist’s equipment, Richard Osman, who co-hosts the BBC quiz show Pointless with Alexander Armstrong, posted a complaint on social media today.
The 51-year-old host penned the following in a since-deleted tweet: “Hi BA. A large group of individuals have been attempting to call you for the past 36 hours without success because you misplaced one of our makeup artist’s work kits on the way to Glasgow. You can’t answer the phone and this is someone’s life.
Meanwhile, the star of Waterloo Road, Angela Griffin, attacked the Passport Office on Twitter.
Many tourists have reported that they are having trouble receiving their passports back on time.
The 45-year-old serial star tweeted: “Applied for a passport for daughter 10 weeks ago, supposed to be flying next week…. is an absolute joke.”
Every time you call, you must wait 72 hours for a callback. When they finally call, they don’t call you back after you lose reception. A truly pitiful system.
Ms. Griffin is not the only one affected by the Passport Office delays, which are unrelated to the pandemonium at the airport but may potentially be caused by a staffing shortage.
For himself, his wife Nicola Armstrong, 46, and their daughter Madison Armstrong, Paul Armstrong, 44, filed for three passports back in April.
On August 19, the pair intended to surprise Madison with a trip to Benidorm, Spain.
Paul claimed that although he obtained his passport a few weeks ago, he has been fighting for his wife and daughter’s passports for the past three and a half months.
He said that Nicola’s birth certificate had been frequently requested by the Passport Office despite the fact that they already had it.
A spokeswoman for the HM Passport Office stated: “We handled about three million applications between March and May, and 98.5 percent of applications were finished within 10 weeks.
However, security checks cannot be compromised, thus applicants should do so well in advance of their trips.
To make sure kids get their passports, we are in touch with the family.
It comes after Heathrow Airport received criticism from the head of airlines for imposing an unprecedented 100,000 cap on daily leaving passengers until September.
After airlines forecasted a significant increase in traffic, Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), claimed the airport should have organized itself.
The former CEO of British Airways told Reuters, “They certainly got it utterly wrong.”
As airports struggle with a manpower shortage throughout the aviation industry and apologize to consumers for the lengthy lines and luggage problems that travelers have had to put up with for weeks, Heathrow also ordered airlines to stop selling summer tickets.
The extraordinary action will place a cap on how many people can depart the airport between July 12 and September 11.
Over that time, airlines planned to operate flights with an average daily capacity of 104,000 seats, which means that further cancellations are likely.
In order to minimize the impact on travelers, Heathrow claimed it has ordered airlines to “stop selling summer tickets.”
In addition to the thousands of flights canceled in previous months, the measure will result in additional cancellations.
As the cause of the cancellations will be deemed to be outside the control of airlines, impacted customers will not be eligible for compensation.
Due to a staffing shortage caused by the thousands of employees who were fired or left the industry during COVID, passengers have been affected by delays and cancellations at airports throughout the UK.
10,000 passengers were inconvenienced by yesterday’s 61 additional last-minute Heathrow flight cancellations.
Additionally, in yet another evidence of instability, easyJet passengers’mutinied’ yesterday after being made to wait for four hours on the runway at Gatwick Airport.
They had to wait “until midnight” to get their luggage after being brought back to the terminal because the plane never even took off.
Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye made the announcement of the passenger cap yesterday.
He said: “Over the past few weeks, as departing passenger numbers have frequently topped 100,000 a day, we have started to observe occasions where service declines to a level that is not acceptable.”
According to Mr. Holland-Kaye, issues include excessive wait periods, delays for passengers who need assistance, bags that do not fly with passengers or arrive late, poor punctuality, and last-minute cancellations.
He claimed that the reason for this is a mix of rising passenger traffic that is “beginning to exceed the combined capacity of airlines, airline ground handlers, and the airport,” together with poor punctuality of arrivals caused by delays at other airports and in European airspace.
He said, “Our staff are working really hard to evacuate as many passengers as they can, but we cannot jeopardize their safety and wellness.”
According to aviation expert Julian Bray, there will be delays at UK airports during the spring of 2019.
All airport aviation employees must receive security clearance, which currently takes between three and six months, thus staffing shortages persist. Many applicants are finding work elsewhere at this time.
When asked what passengers should do if their flights are canceled, he responded:
“Passengers who have flights canceled are entitled to compensation and, if available, a flight on another airline.
should maintain contact with their airline, travel agency, and vacation provider.”
“While the decision to curb passenger numbers will no doubt be inconvenient to many travelers hoping to jet away over the coming months, it is vital if we’re to see a change away from the travel mayhem of recent months,” said Nicky Kelvin, Head of The Points Guy UK.
According to the data, Heathrow has reached its limit for the number of passengers it can now accommodate.
If you are still considering a vacation, we advise you to plan your departure point appropriately. If possible, be flexible with your travel dates or think about starting your journey from another London or U.K. airport.
EasyJet passengers were stuck on a runway for four hours yesterday in sweltering conditions, the latest illustration of the chaos engulfing UK airports.