BA adds capacity to sort snow chaos backlog
Wednesday, 23 Dec, 2010
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British Airways says it hopes to operate a full long-haul departure schedule from Heathrow tomorrow and Friday and the “vast majority” of short-haul flights in and out of the airport.
It also plans to boost capacity on short-haul flights by using larger long-haul aircraft to European cities.
Today it flew a 275-seater Boeing 777 to Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Madrid in order to clear some of the backlog.
There will be normal services from Gatwick and London City with the airline increasing short-haul seat numbers from these airports to European destinations that Heathrow normally serves. The airline will do this by hiring an extra aircraft.
The carrier is playing catch-up after snow-covered Heathrow was closed for most of the weekend, forcing it to cancel more than 2000 flights in the last six days.
BA says it had to divert 40 fully loaded long-haul aircraft to airports around the country and around Europe including Iceland, Spain, Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Germany and Switzerland.
It also saw half of its Heathrow-based shorthaul airbus fleet stuck at European airports including Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels after the snow forced them to close.
Now the airline is busy rescheduling work rosters for 14,000 cabin crew and 3,000 pilots to ensure that there are enough staff for planes to fly over Christmas.
British Airways is still advising customers to check their bookings online to see if their flight will go ahead before travelling to the airport.
It is also asking customers who have bookings to or from Heathrow up until the end of New Years Eve to rebook for a later date or ask for a refund.
Customers who want to rebook should call 0800 727 800.
Chief executive Willie Walsh said: “Our teams are working around the clock to get as many people where they want to be ahead of Christmas Day and we are doing all we can to increase the number of seats available.
“We typically spend six weeks pulling together the complex Christmas rosters for our 14,000 cabin crew and more than 3,000 pilots. Those 17,000 rosters are like a giant global jigsaw puzzle, which has been torn up by the days of disruption at Heathrow and around the world. We now have around a day to rebuild those rosters, so that we get the maximum number of flights into the air ahead of Christmas.
“This is a huge logistical task but we won’t stop working until we fill our aircraft with as many customers as possible.”
by Dinah Hatch
Dinah
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