British Airways, American Among Carriers Making Significant Schedule Cuts

British Airways is further reducing its short-haul schedule through the end of October because of London Heathrow’s decision last week to extend its capacity cap of 100,000 departing passengers per day through Oct. 29, the carrier confirmed to BTN. The cap initially was to end Sept. 11.

“While the vast majority of our customers will travel as planned, and we’re protecting key holiday destinations over [the] half-term, we will need to make some further cancellations up to the end of October,” a British Airways spokesperson wrote in an email. 

The changes will affect about 12 short-haul round-trip flights per day from Heathrow until Oct. 29, for a total of 629 round trips, according to multiple reports. Total capacity reduction from May to October with the new cancellations is about 13 percent.

In addition, the carrier is adjusting its winter schedule—from November through March—with about another 10,000 flights cut in and out of Heathrow, or an 8 percent reduction, Sky News reported Monday.

“We’re giving customers travelling with us this winter notice of some adjustments to our schedule, which will include consolidating some of our short-haul flights to destinations with multiple services,” the carrier said in a statement. “We’ll be offering customers affected by any of these changes an alternative flight with British Airways or another airline, or the option of a refund.”

The British Airways news comes nearly a week after reports noted that American Airlines had reduced its November schedule by about 31,000 domestic and international flights, according to data from Cirium. 

American wouldn’t confirm specific numbers but said in a statement that “these adjustments are in line with our approach to our network and schedule planning throughout the year. We are now loading schedule adjustments approximately 100 days in advance, which is in line with how we adjusted our schedule in 2019 prior to the pandemic.”

Other carriers have trimmed their schedules the past few months after a chaotic start to the summer season, when staffing shortages coupled with weather and operational issues caused thousands of flights to be canceled. United Airlines removed about 12 percent of its Newark Liberty International Airport schedule beginning July 1. Delta Air Lines cut about 100 daily departures between July 1 and Aug. 7 in the U.S. and Latin America.

Further, after JetBlue in April announced it would cut about 10 percent of its summer schedule compared with its initial plan, this past weekend the carrier removed 37 routes, mostly affecting Newark and Fort Lauderdale, The Points Guy reported. JetBlue’s route reduction follows its successful bid for Spirit Airlines. 

The carriers mainly have made the capacity cuts to improve operations. The moves seem to be working as eight of the 10 North American carriers included in Cirium’s July on-time performance report posted better averages than they did in June.