Twenty-four hours after Heathrow asked its airlines to stop selling tickets for departures before 12 September, the vast majority of carriers are still offering summer flights.
In a bid to reduce last-minute cancellations, lost luggage and long queues, Britain’s biggest airport is imposing a “100k-a-day” cap – a limit of 100,000 departing passengers daily.
The schedule analyst OAG calculates there are 122,200 daily seats available on currently scheduled flights from Heathrow. The airport’s presumption is that an average of 101,500 of those seats are currently sold – which will require some flight cancellations to reduce to the cap.
Heathrow calculates that if airlines were to keep selling seats, the excess would increase to 4,000 per day.
The Independent has made test bookings for same-day travel from London Heathrow to 12 destinations on 10 airlines.
Only one of the carriers sampled, Singapore Airlines, has closed sales on departures to its south-east Asian hub until 12 September.
British Airways flights to Singapore are still on sale – as are departures to all the other destinations tested.
A spokesperson for Heathrow said: “The cap instructions were sent yesterday, we imagine it will take some time for airlines to work them through with ACL (the slot coordinator) and adjust their schedules.
“This is designed to provide better, more reliable journeys for passengers and keep everyone working at the airport safe given the very clear resourcing challenges across teams. That’s something airlines should also want.”
John Grant of OAG has estimated a total cost to the airlines of the Heathrow cap as around £500m.
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK – the industry body representing UK-registered carriers – said: “UK airlines are working round the clock to deliver resilient summer schedules and Heathrow needs to play its full part in delivering for travellers.
“It is disappointing that Heathrow, which was forecasting lower passenger numbers and resources required during the recovery phase, has considered it necessary to take this action now to manage these shortcomings.
“The vast majority of flights from Heathrow are departing as planned this summer, and carriers will be in contact as early as possible with any customers affected by the cap.”
A spokesperson for Aer Lingus, which flies from Heathrow to Dublin, Cork, Shannon and Belfast City, said: “We are currently awaiting further direction from the Airport to understand the impact on the Aer Lingus schedule. “Due to the large number of flights into London Heathrow, Aer Lingus will look to minimise disruption caused to customers by these mandated flight cancellations. Customers impacted will receive direct communication from Aer Lingus in the coming days.”
Airlines and routes for which test bookings were made (all direct on the carriers’ websites)
- Aer Lingus: Dublin.
- Air France: Paris.
- American Airlines: Chicago.
- British Airways: Belfast, New York, Rome.
- Emirates: Dubai.
- Flybe: Leeds Bradford.
- Iberia: Madrid (choice of eight flights, as low as £67 one way).
- KLM: Amsterdam.
- Lufthansa: Munich.
- Singapore Airlines: Singapore (BA available from 19 July).
- United: San Francisco.
- Virgin Atlantic: Johannesburg.
