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Passengers left stranded by more easyJet, British Airways cancellations

Published: 13:15 06 Jun 2022 BST

airlines

Airlines were told by ministers to fix problems with staff shortages and flight cancellations quickly by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.

In another weekend of severe disruption, many British holidaymakers found themselves stranded in Europe as easyJet cancelled 80 flights on Sunday with British Airways and Wizz Air also cutting some services.

A further 26 due to arrive at or depart from Gatwick were scrapped by easyJet on Monday from destinations in Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Malta, while BA cancelled 100 flights where it said passengers had already been informed.

At least 15,000 passengers were affected by these flight changes, according to The PC Agency, with the knock-on effect likely to take days to unwind.

An easyJet spokesman told the BBC it was “very sorry”, adding it “fully understood the disruption this will have caused for our customers," adding that everything possible was being done to get passengers to their destinations.”

Heathrow meanwhile has said it will introduce a quota on people flying from the airport until next month on safety grounds.

Airlines have been told to cut the number of passengers by a third at certain times of the day until July 3.

“Without a reduction in demand, the operation would not be considered safe,” Heathrow said.

Shapps has become increasingly critical of airlines recently, blaming them for overbooking and selling too many flights, comments that have infuriated industry chiefs.

"Airlines should be cautious about not overselling those flights, (and) where there are problems they need to fix them quickly," Shapps said in an interview yesterday.

The minister said that the airlines had cut staff too severely during the pandemic and had underestimated the speed at which demand would recover.

Shapps also advocated an automated refund system similar to the process in operation on the UK train network.

"When someone has bought a ticket for a flight, they've every right to expect that flight will take off, and not find that flight has been cancelled," he said.

Shares in easyJet eased 0.9% to 503p while British Airways owner IAG rose 0.9% to 127.04p.

Wizz Air dropped 3% to 2,765p after a trading update.

Peel Hunt noted that May saw a 0.55mln increase in seat capacity to 4.9mln but only a 0.8pp sequential improvement in load factor to 84.2%, which means that its first-quarter forecast of a 90% load factor looks far too high.

“As a result, only 4.1m passengers flew with Wizz Air during May and means our forecast of 5.5m for June looks too optimistic.”

Wizz Air also announced it would cease flying from Doncaster Sheffield Airport from 10 June 2022 and will relocate pilots and cabin crew to other UK bases.

-- adds Heathrow detail --

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