British Airways, Europe's second-biggest airline, is to cancel almost 1,000 flights out of London's Heathrow airport in the next three months to ease the congestion that led to travel disruptions.
BA said today it would cut 966 flights, 2 percent of total operations or 12 flights a day, on domestic, European and long-haul destinations to improve performance.
The move follows an embarrassing week of flight cancellations by BA at Heathrow last month which it blamed on staff shortages and technical problems.
The problems disrupted travel for thousands of passengers before a busy holiday weekend. Heathrow is one of the world's most congested airports.
"We have done a prudent precautionary measure which relieves some pressure on the flying programme at what is a very busy airport," a BA spokesman said.
The airline said only high-frequency routes would be affected, including flights to New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and short-haul routes to Edinburgh, Manchester, Frankfurt, Munich, Brussels and Amsterdam.
The BA board is expected to consider the outcome of an inquiry into last month's cancellations on Friday amid speculation some senior managers may lose their jobs over the problem.
