Airport service providers could sue over flight caps, says Swissport boss

Airports capping flight numbers this summer could face legal challenges from service providers to recoup costs after recruiting workers based on original schedules, the chief executive of aviation services company Swissport said on Monday. Airports including London's Gatwick and Amsterdam's Schiphol have said in recent days that they would offer fewer flights this summer than originally planned, citing a labour crunch that has left them struggling to cope with surging travel demand. "I think that there's going to be some challenges, I suspect legally, to putting caps on airlines," Swissport CEO Warick Brady told Reuters at an airline industry event in Qatar. "We recruited enough people for the summer schedule and they cut the schedules, so we now have too many people. We are going to have a cost overhang because they are cutting." Summer schedules are being cut in the face of mounting public criticism of airports over huge delays. Passengers have often had to wait hours in snaking queues through security and immigration, with some then missing their flights.<br/>