easyJet has cancelled over 1700 flights in the peak summer travel season in August and September disrupting travel plans of thousands of passengers as its main hub, London Gatwick struggles to cope with the first fully post-pandemic year.
The cancellations will affect 180,000 passengers, with 95% of those affected had already been booked onto alternative flights. The rest have been offered a refund, the airline said.
The airline cited unprecedented air traffic control delays at airport causing cancellations that have been worsened by the war in Ukraine, rather than pilot or crew shortages.
“We are currently operating up to around 1800 flights and carrying around 250,000 customers per day with more crew and pilots flying than ever before and like all airlines, we review our flights on an ongoing basis. Customers whose flights are affected are being informed, with 95% customers being rebooked onto an alternative flight and all customers provided with the option to rebook or receive a refund. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused,” an easyJet spokesperson said.
As Eurocontrol has stated, the whole industry is seeing challenging conditions this summer with more constrained air space due to the war in Ukraine resulting in unprecedented ATC delays, as well as further potential ATC strike action. “We have therefore made some pre-emptive adjustments to our programme consolidating a small number of flights at Gatwick, where we have multiple daily frequencies, in order to help mitigate these external challenges on the day of travel for our customers and we continue to operate around over 90,000 flights over this period,” the spokesperson added.
On Saturday alone, easyJet grounded more than 40 flights to and from Gatwick, affecting more than 6,000 passengers.
Other airlines are also warning of more flight cancellations this summer.
United Airlines has said that they will have to reduce their schedule due to a combination of issues that saw hundreds of thousands of passengers affected last month.
Under European air rules, passengers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to travel on any other airline that has seats available on the original day of travel, at easyJet’s expense.
Passengers whose flights are grounded with less than two weeks’ notice are also entitled to cash compensation of £220 for flights above 1,500km unless easyJet can rebook them on a flight that arrives close to the original time.