IAG-owned British Airways was largely unaffected by the imposition of a daily passenger cap at Heathrow airport because the airline had already pre-planned flight cancellations during the summer, group chief executive Luis Gallego has explained. Briefing analysts on 29 July, Gallego said BA's most important tool for avoiding disruption this summer was its strategy of cancelling services well ahead of their scheduled operation to avoid last-minute changes. BA cancelled 16,000 flights over the period May to October, representing 10% of its schedules services and of which 85% were short-haul and 15% long-haul. Amid a second "pre-emptive reduction" phase in June, 1,900 flights were cancelled – mainly in July – representing 1% of the total, says Gallego. An airport slot amnesty programme was implemented by the UK Department for Transport until end-October as a result of the 70:30 usage rule "not working and pressure from HAL security and ground handling staff shortages", and this allowed BA to cancel a further 7% of flights, according to a slide prepared for the call. As a result of these moves, when Heathrow introduced a 100,000-passenger daily cap on 12 July, BA was required to cancel only 0.5% of flights to comply. All told, the UK carrier cancelled some 18.5% of planned operations between May and October. BA sought to cancel long-haul some services on routes with multiple frequencies, such as to Miami. In that case, the daily service was transferred to Oneworld partner American Airlines. BA also delayed the start of Hong Kong and Tokyo services pending the easing of Covid-related restrictions in those jurisdictions. Gallego says IAG carriers still experienced last-minute cancellations as a result of other issues such as ATC disruption and technical issues. A "competitors' operational performance" comparison for cancellations in the second quarter prepared by IAG shows that BA cancelled 2.9% of its flights within 48h of scheduled departure. This compares with a 2.2% average for competitors, Gallego says. However, other IAG carriers bucked the trend: Aer Lingus cancelled only 1% of flights in the period, and Iberia and Vueling virtually none, he adds. Gallego says the aviation industry continued to face "unprecedented" challenges scaling up of operations this summer. He describes the problems faced by London Heathrow as being the result of a "combination of actors in the ecosystem" and says these players, including BA, need to co-ordinate well to well "give resilience to the system". "We hope to improve by the end of the year," he adds. BA chief executive Sean Doyle notes that the airline has brought 4,000 people into business, of whom 3,300 are in operational roles. Some 7,000 new staff need to be in place by year-end, says Doyle. "The run rate that we have today is very much in line with the recovery we see in the business by year-end. The rate we are bringing people in is improving every month," he observes. Heathrow's performance depends on recruitment amid a tight labour market, Doyle notes, and even when security personnel are added, the speed of processing passengers and bags and getting trucks through control posts "isn't as quick" due to an "experience lag". Doyle also cites the effect of wider constraints in third-party ground handlers on operations, saying: "We watch closely how the wider Heathrow ecosystem in terms of supply chain is performing". But he says attrition rates are falling, recruitment is "picking up", and operations at the airport are stabilising. Commenting on recent pay rises for BA staff agreed with the GMB and Unite unions, Gallego says the airline will need to rely on continued strong revenues and staff efficiencies to balance the rise in costs faced by the business.

Europe's air transport regulator has published a safety information bulletin in a bid to mitigate risks arising from airport operational issues amid the strong ramp-up in passenger demand this summer. With passenger numbers now close to pre-pandemic levels in many locations, the European Aviation Safety Agency has issued recommendations which are clustered into four areas: collaboration; occurrence reporting and safety risk management; administrative procedures; and flight-time limitations. EASA is, for example, advising aerodrome operators to increase collaboration with ground-handling service providers, air operators, security-service providers and state agencies to ensure the best use of all available human resources and infrastructure. The agency also proposes that operators apply a collaborative decision-making process with relevant aerodrome stakeholders to identify any emerging operational or capacity issues related to staff shortages, and implement actions to mitigate the impacts.

Ethiopian Airlines has upsized four of on-order Airbus A350s from the -900 to the -1000, becoming Africa's first customer for the largest variant of the widebody family. The Star Alliance member's backlog now consists of four A350-1000s and two A350-900s, it notes. "The A350-1000 is the best fit for our dense routes, and we believe that the upsizing will be instrumental in satisfying the increasing demand of customers in our vast global network across five continents," states group chief executive Mesfin Tasew. Ethiopian has received 16 A350-900s from the 22 it had on order from Airbus. Data shows that the airline has a total of 18 A350-900s in service.