EasyJet has insisted that the vast majority of its passengers will be leaving this summer on the day they made the reservation, after Gatwick was accused of frightening airline customers by announcing capacity cuts.
Flights currently on sale and scheduled will exceed the new limits almost every two days during the months of July and August at London’s second airport, suggesting a total of around 500 cancellations.
Airlines said they were still reviewing schedules and could not be sure how forced cancellations would affect them, leaving many reserved tourists uncertain about their travel plans.
The limit will be exceeded most days around the start of the school holidays in late July, with flights currently expected to peak around July 25, according to Cirium analysts. However, only about 14 more departures than the more than 400 scheduled for this day may be canceled.
Last month, easyJet has already quietly canceled nearly 100 flights scheduled to leave Gatwick in the first week of school holidays, according to data from aviation analysts OAG.
The move was announced by Gatwick on Friday in an attempt to avoid further chaos and last-minute cancellations, after airlines canceled hundreds of flights without late notice for half the period.
Gatwick said he limited flights to 825 daily in July and 850 in August to force airlines to “more predictable and reliable flight schedules” for the summer holidays, when staffing problems would not be resolved. many airlines.
While regulators and business groups have called for more certainty and urged airlines to cancel before risking further turmoil for passengers, consumer groups have criticized the management of the ad. .
Which one? blamed the “drip feed” for feeding more alarm. Rory Boland, Who? The travel editor said: “It was certainly unreasonable to make this announcement without first agreeing with the airlines operating from Gatwick which flights would be canceled.
“Passengers with booked journeys are now panicking over whether their flight will be one of the interrupted. The airport should have worked with the airlines to confirm and communicate all changes to customers first, as this drip information does not it is very useful “.
An easyJet spokesman said: “Given the high frequency of our services to and from Gatwick, we look forward to welcoming back most customers whose flights are affected by the limit.”
British Airways said: “Like other airlines, we are working closely with Gatwick Airport to ensure that our customers can continue to travel safely.”
Ground care, including check-in, plane rotation and baggage handling, remains a major concern, with outsourcing companies struggling to cater to airlines at airports such as Gatwick and Manchester.
The Department of Transportation and the Civil Aviation Authority told the industry this week to make sure flights for sale were “deliverable” and called on airports to set up working groups with airlines and ground operators. to minimize the risk of summer outages.
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John Grant of the OAG said the Gatwick boundary reflected a process that was underway when airlines such as easyJet took stock: “Airlines are proactively canceling flights. Gatwick’s announcement is a reflection of the actions already being taken “.
Grant said few passengers should now see existing reservations affected by the airport movement, but added: “What’s going on beyond here is at the mercy of Covid and other events.”
A spokesman for Manchester and Stansted airports said they would not follow suit. Thousands of Heathrow flights were pre-emptively canceled by BA in April through late summer to ensure resilience, as it became clear that labor shortages and a bottleneck in security clearances for new hires they were causing problems to the whole industry.