British Airways is canceling about 10,000 short-haul flights to and from Heathrow Airport in London between October and March. The move is intended to minimize disruptions during the winter, and some long-haul flights will also be affected. British has announced that it will also cancel about 12 round-trip flights a day – and a total of 629 flights – until the end of October.
Heathrow, the company’s main hub of operations, recently limited the number of passengers departing from the airport due to staff shortages. The airport is dealing with increasing numbers of passengers and problems with baggage delivery, which has caused long queues at the baggage claim terminals.
British Airways announced that it was “maintaining key holiday destinations in the medium term”. Most of the cancellations will be on flights to destinations that have a daily alternative.
Passengers affected by the changes will be offered an alternative flight with British Airways or another company – or a refund. The company emphasized that the impact on passengers will be “minimal”, and that most of its flights have not been changed: “The passengers who booked a flight for the winter will be able to fly as planned, and they will be given a few months notice regarding any changes”.
It should be noted that most schools in England go on vacation in the last week of October.
British Airways also announced that it is expected to operate an average of 290 daily return flights from Heathrow during the winter – a decrease of 8%.
John Strickland, an aviation consultant, said the number of canceled flights appeared to be “negligible in relation to the activity that will take place as planned”. According to him, “at this stage they are expected to cause inconvenience to very few people, and I would not expect a significant effect on prices.”
British Airways is the largest airline operating from Heathrow. Earlier this month, it stopped selling tickets for short flights from the airport for two weeks, in order to avoid exceeding the 100,000 passengers per day limit set by Heathrow. That cap was supposed to remain in effect until September 11, but was recently extended until October 29.
At the time of the announcement of the extension, Heathrow said that following the setting of the quota, there are fewer last-minute flight cancellations, and there has been an improvement in regards to baggage delivery.
British Airways has already canceled more than 30,000 flights this summer.