DUBAI: Emirates airline said on Thursday it had rejected demands by London’s Heathrow Airport to cut capacity despite being threatened with legal action, and intended to continue operating its six daily flights to Britain’s busiest airport.

Heathrow this week asked airlines to stop selling some tickets for summer flights, limiting the number of passengers flying from the hub to 100,000 a day to ease pressure on operations that have been unable to keep up with demand.

Emirates, owned by the government of Dubai, said Heathrow had given the airline 36 hours from Wednesday to reduce capacity on its six daily flights, which are operated with the Airbus A380 superjumbo.

“Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we should throw out paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance,” the airline said. “Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from (Heathrow),” it said in the statement.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2022