British Airways has suspended selling short-haul flights from Heathrow for at least a fortnight, Sky News understands, as another European airport announced it was extending a cap on passenger numbers.
The decision to stop new bookings on domestic and European services until 15th August is to comply with Heathrow’s cap on passenger numbers.
It is further understood that ticket sales will be kept under review for the duration of the airport’s capacity limit – initially set until 11 September.
The move follows BA’s own reductions to flight schedules of the past few months, aimed at building greater resilience following disruption for passengers as staffing levels remain down on 2019 levels.
BA said: “When Heathrow introduced its passenger cap, we took a small number of additional flights from our schedule and to continue to comply with the cap, we’ve been taking responsible action by limiting sales or all the available fares on some of our Heathrow services to ensure more seats are available to rebook customers.
Advertisement“We’ll continue to manage bookings to be within the Heathrow imposed cap so we can get our customers away as planned this summer.”
It came as Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport said on Tuesday that passenger caps introduced for the summer season to cope with long waiting times will be extended into September (67,500 per day) and October (69,500 per day).
More on British Airways Related Topics: British AirwaysHeathrow AirportIt added other measures, such as asking passengers to show up no more than four hours before their flights, will continue.
The unprecedented move by BA will result in thousands of seats being removed from sale and potentially increase demand and inflate prices with rival firms.
Tens of thousands of flights have already been cancelled this summer as the industry struggles to cope with the demand for air travel amid staffing shortages.
Heathrow announced last month that no more than 100,000 daily departing passengers are permitted until 11 September.
BA had earlier responded to Heathrow’s cap on passenger numbers by announcing it would cancel 10,300 flights until October, with one million passengers affected.
The suspension of BA’s short-haul flights from Heathrow comes after many passengers flying to and from the UK’s busiest airport have suffered severe disruption in recent months, with long security queues and baggage system breakdowns.
For its part, Heathrow has blamed shortfalls of workers in third party companies including airlines.
The UK’s largest airport said on Tuesday it had handled one million passengers over the first ten days of the school holidays.
It said security staff – back at levels seen in 2019 – were clearing 80% of passengers within 20 minutes or less.
The airport explained that airline ground handlers remained at 70% of pre-pandemic levels and the shortage was the main reason behind its capacity cap.
Middle Eastern airline Emirates initially rejected Heathrow’s order to cancel flights to comply with its cap.
The airline accused the airport of showing “blatant disregard for consumers” by attempting to force it to “deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers” through the cap.
A Heathrow spokeswoman said at the time it would be “disappointing” if “any airline would want to put profit ahead of a safe and reliable passenger journey”.
Virgin Atlantic also criticised the airport’s actions and claimed it was responsible for failures which are contributing to the chaos.
Meanwhile, on 21 July airlines were accused of “harmful practices” in their treatment of passengers affected by disruption.
The Competition and Markets Authority and the Civil Aviation Authority issued a joint letter to carriers, expressing concern that “consumers could experience significant harm unless airlines meet their obligations”.
The letter stated: “We are concerned that some airlines may not be doing everything they could to avoid engaging in one or more harmful practices.”
These include selling more tickets for flights “than they can reasonably expect to supply”, not always “fully satisfying obligations” to offer flights on alternative airlines to passengers affected by cancellations, and failing to give consumers “sufficiently clear and upfront information about their rights”.