Aer Lingus loses 17 weekend flights to Heathrow cap, industrial action and staff illness

Aer Lingus has been forced to pull one flight a day from Heathrow until Sunday of next week as the London airport looks to cap passenger numbers.

The airline said it will look to minimise disruption to passengers on the flights by reallocating them where possible to one of its many other flights out of Heathrow.

It said the flights affected this weekend by what it called “mandated flight cancellations” were the 2.20pm flight to Dublin on Friday, that same flight on Sunday, and also a flight out of Heathrow to Cork at 9.20am on Saturday.

Aer Lingus will continue to cancel one one-way or one return Heathrow flight each day until next weekend.

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“Aer Lingus is contacting impacted customers directly to apologise, advise them of their customer rights and offer options including rebooking or refund,” a spokeswoman said.

The airline has also been affected by industrial action at three European airports this weekend.

That will mean cancellation of four flights to and from the French airports of Bordeaux and Lyon on Friday and Saturday and flights to and from Pisa airport in Italy on Sunday.

In addition, Aer Lingus had to pull flights on Friday to and from Munich and to and from London Gatwick because of “elevated levels of sickness” among crew. The airline has been struggling with high levels of Covid-19 infections among staff in recent weeks.

Altogether, the airline will lose 17 flights over the weekend.

“Our teams are working to re-accommodate those impacted as efficiently as possible,” the spokeswoman said. “Aer Lingus wishes to apologise to our customers who have been impacted by these cancellations.”

The Irish airline is among those scrambling to adapt to new passenger caps imposed by London Heathrow earlier this week. The airport said it would limit passengers numbers flying out on a daily basis to 100,000 between now and September 11th.

Sister airline British Airways has announced that it will not be cancelling any of its Irish flights. It will focus instead on taking six domestic and Amsterdam flights out of its schedule over the coming weeks on the basis that it can most easily accommodate those passengers on trains or from Gatwick or London City airports.

Heathrow’s instruction

Meanwhile, Emirates has flatly refused to comply with Heathrow’s instruction.

The airline accused the west London airport of showing “blatant disregard for consumers” by attempting to force it to “deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers” through the cap.

Emirates, which operates six daily return flights between the airport and Dubai, said in a statement: “LHR [London Heathrow] last evening gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, of a figure that appears to be 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 noncompliance.

“This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands. Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from LHR.”

Virgin Atlantic also criticised the airport’s actions and claimed it was responsible for failures which are contributing to the chaos.

A Heathrow spokeswoman said it would be “disappointing” if “any airline would want to put profit ahead a safe and reliable passenger journey”. — Additional reporting, PA