LONDON – Tomorrow, Emirates will begin its third additional flight to London Gatwick on a temporary basis while Heathrow Airport copes with the ongoing carnage.
The flights will run from July 27 until August 3. The airline said the following in a statement:
“This third daily flight will help serve high demand from customers traveling to and from London this summer. It will also provide additional seats to accommodate Emirates passengers affected by capacity adjustments on flights from London Heathrow, which will be made to help ease operational pressures at the airport.”
“Emirates’ customers impacted by capacity adjustments at London Heathrow will be contacted directly by the airline or their travel agent.”
“The airline is working closely with its travel partners to re-accommodate any impacted bookings and ensure smooth onward flight connections for customers to reach their planned destination.”
EK011 and EK012 will be the flight numbers for this additional flight, which will be operated by the airline’s Boeing 777 aircraft.
The airline continued in its statement, expressing gratitude to Gatwick Airport:
“Emirates is grateful for the support of London Gatwick Airport, along with other partners on the ground who have been working closely with the airline to secure sufficient ground handling resources to deal with the additional demand and provide passengers with a smooth and reliable journey. “
“Emirates will continue to operate its six daily flights to/from London Heathrow during this period, and its planned re-start of daily services to London Stansted will commence on 1 August.”
The Heathrow Chaos: Context…
Following Emirates’ recent statement expressing their annoyance with the recent Heathrow Airport decision to restrict passenger numbers for departing flights, a joint statement has been issued by the respective heads of the two parties.
The joint statement from Emirates Airlines President Sir Tim Clark KBE and Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye released on 15 July reads as follows:
“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.”
Overall…
It is good news that Emirates has found a work-around to prevent cancellations, and minimize disruption. The only form this disruption would take for passengers would be to travel to Gatwick instead of Heathrow.
Such revelations that have come out of this battle show how high in demand the London flights are from Dubai, for both connecting passengers and also for tourism in Dubai as a whole as well.
Looking ahead, it is going to be interesting to see how long it will take Heathrow to bring the chaos to disruption, and to ensure the smoother flow of flights operating out of the airport.
