Massive flight cancellations that threaten to scupper the holiday plans of thousands of travelers will be announced next week as strike action leaves a “question mark” over this year’s summer air travel schedule.
The government is preparing to introduce new regulations to allow a one-off “amnesty” for airport slot procedures in a bid to introduce a more practical flight schedule to prevent the last-minute cancellations that have plagued the industry in recent weeks.
The move will mean airlines will be able to cancel flights without fear of penalty, but operators must submit their flight schedule by Friday, a spokesman for Heathrow Airport said.
The decision was met with praise from British Airways (BA) and Heathrow Airport – both of which have experienced some of the worst travel chaos in recent memory.
A Heathrow spokesman said the slot amnesty was “good news for passengers”, adding: “This amnesty will allow airlines to make early choices to consolidate their schedules, increasing the resilience of flight operations and giving passengers the confidence they deserve. before your travels.
“We encourage airlines to take this opportunity to review their flight schedules without penalty and to inform passengers as early as possible of any changes.”
But an airport spokesman also told The Independent that BA’s impending strike, planned for later in the summer, left a “further question mark” over whether BA could deliver on the timetable plans it will set out next week.
BA staff are demanding that pay, which was cut by 10 per cent during the pandemic, be reinstated. They say their wages were “stolen” from them last year and they faced a “fire and rehire” tactic.
The impending departures add more “uncertainty” to Britons looking to make the most of the summer after two years of Covid-related disruption, a spokesman added.
They continued: “I guess British Airways are looking at the summer as a whole. So one thing is what’s the schedule they could work on? Another is, what are their contingencies if strike action does indeed continue?
“They may not have to dump many flights because we also don’t know the scale yet.”
The Independent has contacted BA about the likelihood of it being able to produce an accurate flight schedule in the event of a strike, but has yet to hear back.
It was also asked to outline its plans for alerting customers if their flight is cancelled, delayed or rescheduled due to a departure.
According to The Mirror, BA now has to re-deploy 80 to 85 percent of its passengers whose flights have been canceled in recent days.
Last month, the Department for Transport (DfT) said it would give airlines a short window to return slots for the remainder of the summer season that they are unsure they can operate.
“This will help passengers find alternative arrangements ahead of time, rather than facing the last-minute cancellations seen during the Easter and half-term holidays,” the department said.
This week Heathrow ordered the cancellation of flights because it could not cope with them.
On Thursday and Friday, airport passengers complained of long queues, canceled flights and lost luggage as “scheduling interference” and disruption at UK airports was exacerbated by strikes in Spain.
A spokesman for British Airways said: “We welcome these new measures which help us to provide the security our customers deserve by making it easier to consolidate some of our quieter daily flights to multi-frequency destinations much earlier and to protect more than our holiday flights.”
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