Aer Lingus passengers risk further Heathrow cancellations
On Thursday Aer Lingus cancelled two one-way flights from London Heathrow to Dublin and Shannon.
Aer Lingus passengers travelling from or via Heathrow face the prospect of further cancellations over the coming weeks due to capacity issues at the world's busiest airport. Heathrow authorities are coming under increasing pressure from airlines since they announced the capping of flights earlier this week.
On Thursday Aer Lingus cancelled two one-way flights from London Heathrow to Dublin and Shannon and said it was awaiting further direction from Heathrow authorities regarding the possible impact on flight schedules in the coming weeks.
It also apologised to the customers whose flights were affected and said it was working on ways to deal with those issues.
It is the latest issue to befall airline passengers in recent weeks, with a Covid-19 outbreak impacting staffing levels, a surge in passenger numbers and other flights out of Dublin Airport also being cancelled.
London Heathrow has also experienced serious issues as the summer season has got into full swing, resulting in the controversial decision to cap passenger numbers to 100,000 per day until mid-September.
In its most recent statement, airport authorities said: "We’ve recently experienced a number of challenging conditions at Heathrow that has made it difficult to maintain the quality of service for which we are world-renowned. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to reduce capacity at the airport with effect from 12 July to 11 September.
"We sincerely apologise to anyone whose travel plans are affected by this. Our aim is that everyone who travels through Heathrow can be confident they’ll have a safe and smooth journey through the airport and get to their destination with their bags.
"Similar measures to control passenger demand have been implemented at other airports both in the UK and around the world."
In an earlier statement, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said staff were "doing the very best they can with the resources available" but that some form of intervention was required.
"Over the past few weeks, as departing passenger numbers have regularly exceeded 100,000 a day, we have started to see periods when service drops to a level that is not acceptable: long queue times, delays for passengers requiring assistance, bags not travelling with passengers or arriving late, low punctuality and last-minute cancellations," he said.
However, the decision to cap passenger numbers until mid-September has been blasted by at least one large airline, with Emirates claiming it was "unreasonable and unacceptable" and it showed a "blatant disregard" for customers.
It declared that Heathrow now faced "an 'airmageddon' situation due to their incompetence and non-action".
Emirates said it had been given 36 hours to cut departing passenger numbers, and therefore flights, and was threatened with legal action for not complying.
"This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands," it said.
Aer Lingus is one of the biggest users of the airport, operating up to 23 flights to and from Heathrow each day, from Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast. It said it wanted to minimise disruption caused to customers by the cancelled flights, and that they will receive direct communication from Aer Lingus in the coming days.
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