Emirates dont muck about

[StanTheMan]

Emirates statement on operations at London Heathrow

14 July 2022 – Emirates values our partnerships with airport stakeholders across our network with whom we engage continuously, and collaboratively, to secure our flight operations and ensure minimal customer disruption, particularly over the peak travel months.

It is therefore highly regrettable that LHR 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 non-compliance.

This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands.

At London Heathrow airport (LHR), our ground handling and catering – run by dnata, part of the Emirates Group – are fully ready and capable of handling our flights. So the crux of the issue lies with the central services and systems which are the responsibility of the airport operator.

Emirates is a key and steadfast operator at LHR, having reinstated 6 daily A380 flights since October 2021. From our past 10 months of regularly high seat loads, our operational requirements cannot be a surprise to the airport.

Now, with blatant disregard for consumers, they wish to force Emirates to deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers who have paid for, and booked months ahead, their long-awaited package holidays or trips to see their loved ones. And this, during the super peak period with the upcoming UK holidays, and at a time when many people are desperate to travel after 2 years of pandemic restrictions.

Emirates believes in doing the right thing by our customers. However, re-booking the sheer numbers of potentially impacted passengers is impossible with all flights running full for the next weeks, including at other London airports and on other airlines. Adding to the complexity, 70% of our customers from LHR are headed beyond Dubai to see loved ones in far flung destinations, and it will be impossible to find them new onward connections at short notice.

Moving some of our passenger operations to other UK airports at such short notice is also not realistic. Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall.

The bottomline is, the LHR management team are cavalier about travellers and their airline customers. All the signals of a strong travel rebound were there, and for months, Emirates has been publicly vocal about the matter. We planned ahead to get to a state of readiness to serve customers and travel demand, including rehiring and training 1,000 A380 pilots in the past year.

LHR 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 shareholders of London Heathrow should scrutinise the decisions of the LHR management team.

Given the tremendous value that the aviation community generates for the UK economy and communities, we welcome the action taken by the UK Department for Transport and Civil Aviation Authority to seek information from LHR on their response plans, systems resilience, and to explain the seemingly arbitrary cap of 100,000 daily passengers. Considering LHR handled 80.9 million passengers annually in 2019, or a daily average of 219,000, the cap represents greater than a 50% cut at a time when LHR claims to have 70% of ground handling resources in place.

Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from LHR.

[BuildBackBetter]

Has Al Baker moved to Emirates?

[BuildBackBetter]

They should request Govt to take over temporarily and hire more staff. Sell it off after one or two years.

[PeteM]

Love it – finally someone taking a bold stance.

[JDB]

BuildBackBetter wrote:

They should request Govt to take over temporarily and hire more staff. Sell it off after one or two years.

How is the government better placed to hire staff? They can’t hire staff for their own services, let alone anyone else’s. Heathrow has a full complement of staff, the airlines and handlers don’t.

The issue is that Emirates is being asked to pick up the tab (ie cut capacity) for those airlines that don’t have sufficient ground/baggage handling in place and unsurprisingly don’t like that. Emirates also devote a lot of time to trying to get airport charges down, which ultimately means less staffing. Oh, and they hate the fact that Qatar is the second biggest shareholder of HAL.

[ChrisC]

BuildBackBetter wrote:

They should request Govt to take over temporarily and hire more staff. Sell it off after one or two years.

The government is in no better position to be able to hire more staff than HAL and the airlines are able to.

[WaynedP]

Yes, fascinating development.

I may not entirely agree with all arguments presented by either side, and am aware of significant vested interests of both sides, but I think that more good than harm is likely to come out of a frank and transparent public debate on the matter, which won’t necessarily happen if you just roll over like most other airlines have done so far and meekly slash your Summer schedules.

[JDB]

WaynedP wrote:

Yes, fascinating development.

I may not entirely agree with all arguments presented by either side, and am aware of significant vested interests of both sides, but I think that more good than harm is likely to come out of a frank and transparent public debate on the matter, which won’t necessarily happen if you just roll over like most other airlines have done so far and meekly slash your Summer schedules.

You are basically right, but I think some airlines are quietly pleased, as they needed to cut flights, but now have the excuse to do so and have someone else to blame.

[Lady London]

Good on Emirates. Clearly their lawyers involved in drafting that statement.

[Olly]

I love the sass in this line:

“Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall.”

#teamemirates

[WaynedP]

JDB wrote:

WaynedP wrote:

Yes, fascinating development.

I may not entirely agree with all arguments presented by either side, and am aware of significant vested interests of both sides, but I think that more good than harm is likely to come out of a frank and transparent public debate on the matter, which won’t necessarily happen if you just roll over like most other airlines have done so far and meekly slash your Summer schedules.

You are basically right, but I think some airlines are quietly pleased, as they needed to cut flights, but now have the excuse to do so and have someone else to blame.

Of course, and no doubt there are good, competent decision-makers who are genuine hostages of egregious circumstances. But I’ll wager there are also a fair few operators who overestimate their own talent and simply aren’t up to the job.

We all stand to gain when the spotlight reveals donkeys trying to pass themselves off as stallions.

[dbbs]

PeteM wrote:

Love it – finally someone taking a bold stance.

yep!!

[JDB]

Lady London wrote:

Good on Emirates. Clearly their lawyers involved in drafting that statement.

Lawyers are involved in drafting most press releases, particularly if the company is listed.

This is fairly standard corporate megaphone diplomacy like the recent spat of Tesco vs Heinz, now settled. Emirates will comply with the cuts as have other airlines (and as they have at LGW), but they need a bogeyman to explain cancellations to customers and HAL understands that. As you would expect, HAL has a good high level and operational relationship with its clients, even if in public they fight aggressively re charges or something like this. Other airlines have pushed back to make cutbacks in a way that suits them better than HAL’s proposal, but haven’t made so much noise, but clearly it’s going to be awkward to cancel certain reservations rather than whole flights.

The same process has been going on in Frankfurt, Amsterdam & Paris and it would appear that some airlines have been rather blatant about saying that full fare pax will be prioritised…

We still await the independent slot coordinator’s proposals for distribution of cuts further out.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[ChrisC]

And an agreement has been reached

https://mediacentre.heathrow.com/pressrelease/details/81/News-1/14065

“The President of Emirates Airline and the CEO of Heathrow Airport held a constructive meeting this morning. Emirates agreed the airline was ready and willing to work with the airport to remediate the situation over the next 2 weeks, to keep demand and capacity in balance and provide passengers with a smooth and reliable journey through Heathrow this summer.

“Emirates has capped further sales on its flights out of Heathrow until mid-August to assist Heathrow in its resource ramp-up, and is working to adjust capacity.

“In the meantime, Emirates flights from Heathrow operate as scheduled and ticketed passengers may travel as booked.”

[JDB]

As predicted.

Fraport yesterday requested permission from the government to reduce capacity at FRA by 10% over the rest of the summer, LH fully supportive although it has already made significant flight cuts.

[Andrew J]

A point well made by them that LHR need to give more notice about these things.