The airline, which cut 10,300 flights from its remaining summer schedule last week, said having to cancel more services from Heathrow was “incredibly disappointing news for our customers”. 

Heathrow has imposed a daily departing passenger limit of 100,000 until 11 September to help ease pressure on the airport and reduce disruption as the aviation industry struggles to recruit enough staff to deal with the resurgence in travel this summer.

BA is cancelling the additional Heathrow flights up to 25 July with only domestic and short-haul services affected. The airline is trying to move affected customers to other services from Gatwick or London City airports or on to train services instead.

“As a result of Heathrow’s request, we will now need to take a small number of additional flights out of our schedule and we will be contacting customers to apologise, advise them of their customer rights and offer options including rebooking or refund,” said a BA spokesperson.

“We also know that some customers may want to review their travel plans in light of the current travel challenges and have introduced a policy that will allow customers to easily change travel dates so that they have additional flexibility.”

Meanwhile, Emirates has rejected Heathrow’s demand for the carrier to cut capacity on its flights, describing the request as “unreasonable and unacceptable”. It has vowed to continue operating its planned schedule from the airport.