The boss of easyJet today insisted that the “vast majority” of passengers with cancelled flights will be rebooked on alternatives within 24 hours.
The UK budget carrier has been at the eye of the storm of flight disruption since Easter, particularly at its main base at Gatwick, due to a steep return in passenger demand.
April and May passenger numbers were seven times the same months last year, the airline disclosed in a trading update today.
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EasyJet said: “Given the unprecedented ramp up, the aviation industry across Europe is experiencing operational issues with root causes similar to the post-Covid supply chain issues being seen in many other parts of the economy.”
The airline plans to operate around 140,000 flights in the three months to June 30, carrying around 22 million passengers with capacity planned to be 550% of the same period in 2021.
But the airline now faces summer flight caps at both Gatwick and Amsterdam Schiphol on top of air traffic control delays and staff shortages in ground handling and at airports.
This has resulted in increased aircraft turnaround times and delayed departures which have a knock-on effect resulting in flight cancellations.
“A very tight labour market for the whole ecosystem including crew, compounded by increased ID check times, has reduced planned resilience further,” EasyJet said.
“This is reflected in the flight caps announced recently at two of our biggest airports, London Gatwick and Amsterdam.”
EasyJet is proactively consolidating a number of flights across affected airports in response to these caps and to build additional resilience.
“This provides customers with advance notice and the potential to rebook onto alternative flights,” the airline said.
“Given easyJet’s high frequency network, we expect to be able to rebook the majority of customers on alternative flights, with many being on the same day as originally booked for.”
The airline now expects capacity for the peak three months to September to be at 90% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels, with the schedule 86% sold as demand remains strong.
“There will be a cost impact from disruption, coupled with the enhanced resilience easyJet is putting in place this summer, from additional wet leased aircraft, crew costs and airport charges,” the carrier said.
“We believe that these capacity/cost impacts are a one-off this summer as we would expect all parties to build greater resilience in time for 2023 peak periods.
“We will continue to fine tune our schedule in the light of industry conditions as we move through the summer season in order to deliver for our customers.”
Chief executive Johan Lundgren said: “Delivering a safe and reliable operation for our customers in this challenging environment is easyJet’s highest priority and we are sorry that for some customers we have not been able to deliver the service they have come to expect from us.
“While in recent weeks the action we have taken to build in further resilience has seen us continue to operate up to 1,700 flights and carry up to a quarter of a million customers a day, the ongoing challenging operating environment has unfortunately continued to have an impact which has resulted in cancellations.
“Coupled with airport caps, we are taking pre-emptive actions to increase resilience over the balance of summer, including a range of further flight consolidations in the affected airports, giving advance notice to customers and we expect the vast majority to be rebooked on alternative flights within 24 hours.
“We believe this is the right action for us to take so we can deliver for all of our customers over the peak summer period in this challenging environment.”
The carrier insisted its medium-term outlook “remains attractive”.
It has won an additional three aircraft-worth of slots at Lisbon airport which will become available from the winter.
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