UAE’s Emirates Airline slams London Heathrow airport, rejects demands to cut passengers

Emirates airline has criticised one of the busiest airports in the world for its "incompetence" in failing to handle a rise in travellers. According to CNN, the Dubai-based airline criticised requests made earlier this week by London's Heathrow airport that airlines halt selling any more tickets for this summer. Like other airports, Heathrow has had a difficult time adjusting to an increase of travellers following two years of pandemic restrictions and staff reductions. The airport said on Tuesday that it will set a daily cap of 100,000 passengers until September 11.

The airline, which operates six daily flights from Heathrow, has rejected the new limits and called them "entirely unreasonable and unacceptable", CNN reported.

"(London 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 airline said in a statement, CNN reported.

Also read: London Heathrow Airport apologises to travellers for flight cancellations

The company said that Heathrow had given it only 36 hours to comply with the new cap, and had threatened legal action against airlines that refuse to comply. It added that it had enough ground handling and catering staff to handle its flights at the airport.

Emirates said that Heathrow`s management team were "cavalier about travellers and their airline customers," and had failed to rehire and train enough staff in advance of the predictable surge in summer travel, CNN reported.

On average, Heathrow handled nearly 220,000 passengers each day, split between arrivals and departure, in 2018. Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said in an open letter to passengers on Tuesday that airlines had sold too many seats for the coming months.

With inputs from IANS