Emirates refuses 'unacceptable' passenger cap at Heathrow
Long-haul operator Emirates has hit back at Heathrow’s demands for schedule cuts, slamming the airport’s management and handling of the current travel crisis.
The Dubai-based carrier, which has six daily departures from the airport and also operates at Gatwick and Stansted, said it was “highly regrettable” that Heathrow gave it 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, describing the figure as being “plucked from thin air”.
“Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we should throw out paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance,” Emirates said in its statement.
“This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands.”
Emirates, owned by the Dubai government’s investment arm, said its ground handling and catering at Heathrow is run by its own subsidiary Dnata, and was “fully ready and capable” of handling its flights.
“So the crux of the issue lies with the central services and systems which are the responsibility of the airport operator.
“Emirates is a key and steadfast operator at LHR, having reinstated 6 daily A380 flights since October 2021.
“From our past 10 months of regularly high seat loads, our operational requirements cannot be a surprise to the airport.”
The airline said that with “blatant disregard for consumers”, Heathrow wanted to force it to deny seats to “tens of thousands of travellers” who had paid for, and booked months ahead, their long-awaited package holidays or trips.
“And this, during the super peak period with the upcoming UK holidays, and at a time when many people are desperate to travel after two years of pandemic restrictions.
“Emirates believes in doing the right thing by our customers.
“However, re-booking the sheer numbers of potentially impacted passengers is impossible with all flights running full for the next weeks, including at other London airports and on other airlines.
“Adding to the complexity, 70% of our customers from Heahtrow are headed beyond Dubai to see loved ones in far flung destinations, and it will be impossible to find them new onward connections at short notice.”
Emirates said moving some of its passenger operations to other UK airports at such short notice was also not realistic.
“Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall.
“The bottomline is, the LHR management team are cavalier about travellers and their airline customers.
“All the signals of a strong travel rebound were there, and for months, Emirates has been publicly vocal about the matter.”
Emirates said it “planned ahead” to get to a state of readiness to serve customers and travel demand, including rehiring and training 1,000 A380 pilots in the last year.
“Heathrow chose not to act, not to plan, not to invest.
“Now faced with an ‘airmageddon’ situation due to their incompetence and non-action, they are pushing the entire burden - of costs and the scramble to sort the mess - to airlines and travellers.
“The shareholders of London Heathrow should scrutinise the decisions of the LHR management team.”
Emirates said that, given the “tremendous value” aviation generates for the UK economy and communities, it welcomed the action taken by the UK Department for Transport and Civil Aviation Authority to seek information from Heathrow on its response plans, systems resilience, and to explain the “seemingly arbitrary” cap of 100,000 daily passengers.
“Considering LHR handled 80.9 million passengers annually in 2019, or a daily average of 219,000, the cap represents greater than a 50% cut at a time when Heathrow claims to have 70% of ground handling resources in place.
“Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from London Heathrow.”
Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.