London’s Gatwick Airport has followed in the footsteps of Amsterdam’s Schiphol in restricting the number of flights operating out of the airport over the summer. The capacity crunch that has been plaguing European aviation over the past couple of months is showing no signs of abating, therefore airports are starting to limit operations in a bid to avoid delays and cancelations.
Gatwick’s bosses have asked airlines to trim schedules to the tune of up to 50 flights per day. In all, the number of daily flights will be reduced from the current 900 to 825 in July and 850 in August. The airport CEO Stewart Wingate commented,
“Airlines will have to trim back their schedules somewhat … By taking decisive action now, we aim to help the ground handlers - and also our airlines - to better match their flying programmes with their available resources.”
Thousands of passengers have been affected by airline delays and cancellations over the recent weeks, with the end of May / early June holiday week seeing particular pain points.
Which flights will be cut?
For Gatwick, the limitations are on the absolute number of flights operating to and from the airport; the airport does not stipulate the services that should be cut. As such, it will fall to the airlines themselves to select the services to reduce.
As many of the services will already have bookings, airlines will be keen to minimize the risk of needing to rebook passengers with rival airlines. As such, the most likely services to go will be the frequently serviced routes, giving the airlines more options for transferring their passengers onto another service on the same day.
The largest airline operating from Gatwick is easyJet. The carrier has already scrapped around 40 flights per day for the rest of June and July, so may not have to cancel any more services. British Airways too has cut 8,000 flights from its March-October schedule. It’s unlikely the carrier will cut any of its lucrative long-haul ops from Gatwick, preferring instead to hand the burden to its short-haul IAG partner Vueling.
Other airlines with significant operations at LGW include TUI, Wizz, and to a lesser extent Ryanair and Norwegian. Passengers can expect an announcement from airlines in the coming days as to which services are affected. No doubt airlines will be keen to make as many cancelations as possible outside of the 14-day window in which EU261 compensation will kick in
Will other airports follow suit?
To date, only Gatwick and Schiphol have implemented capacity restrictions for the summer. For Gatwick, the rebound in travel has been exceptional, given that the airport lost huge amounts of traffic (and airlines) during the pandemic.
Heathrow has been badly affected, despite not being impacted quite as much during the downturn. But its reopening of Terminal 4 earlier this week should be a positive influence, easing congestion at its other three terminals.
Hopefully, with recruitment progressing at pace and some airlines preemptively canceling flights, there won’t be any more airports restricting services. But with labor disputes on the horizon for several airlines and the peak of summer travel yet to come, things are still rather up in the air – pun not intended.