Holiday Ayo - UK-based airline British Airways plans to cut flight schedules for the winter season until the end of October 2022. This is due to airport passenger restrictions and reduced demand during the coming fall and winter.

As cited from CNN, Wednesday (24/8), the airline said the total capacity for the winter schedule until the end of March 2023 would be reduced by eight percent. This restriction will affect approximately 10,000 flights (or approximately 5,000 round trips).

The announcement follows the extension of the daily limit of 100,000 passengers now in place at London's Heathrow Airport. The airport had to impose restrictions in July 2022 as it struggled to deal with staff shortages, long queues, flight delays and piles of lost baggage during the height of summer.

The limit extension at Heathrow, the largest airport serving the UK, also affected hundreds of British Airways flights between now and the end of October 2022.

"For us, that means we have to cancel an average of a further 12 short-haul round trips from London Heathrow each day," the airline said in a statement.

As of October 29, 2022, there are a total of 629 round-trip flights. Affected customers will be offered another flight with British Airways or another airline, the statement said, or passengers will be given the option of a refund.

British Airways is not the only major carrier to cut flights in the months ahead as the industry copes with the supply and demand hit from the pandemic. American Airlines also cut 16 percent of its schedule (31,000 flights) during November 2022 alone.

The biggest cuts were for flights between Chicago O'Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth and between Boston and Philadelphia. They started smaller cuts for the September and October 2022 schedule.

Kathleen Bangs, a former airline pilot and current spokeswoman for flight tracking site FlightAware, recently told CNN Travel that the flight cuts a few months earlier offered some kind of silver lining.

They are expected to "reduce delays and minimize cancellations for everyone if the schedule is reduced a little bit realistically. That's probably a good thing."