Britain's biggest budget airline, easyJet, has cancelled at least 36 domestic and European flights on Thursday to and from its biggest base, London Gatwick airport.
The Independent calculates at least four domestic flights have been grounded: round-trips from Gatwick to Belfast City and Glasgow.
Twenty-two international flights are cancelled, including round-trips from Gatwick to Agadir in Morocco, Prague and Gibraltar.
The airline says it is proactively cancelling 240 flights in the 10 days to 6 June, giving passengers some advance notice. But there are also some last-minute groundings, with travellers to Nice, Montpellier and Marseille given as little as two hours’ notice that their flights were axed.
While airlines do not disclose passenger loads on the grounds of commercial sensitivity, if an average of 150 people were booked on each flight at the point of cancellation then over 5,000 travellers will have been affected by today’s cancellations.
Thursday flights cancelled by easyJet to and from London Gatwick
- Agadir
- Alicante
- Basel
- Belfast City
- Berlin
- Bologna
- Budapest
- Copenhagen
- Gibraltar
- Glasgow
- Krakow
- Madrid
- Marseille
- Milan Malpensa
- Montpellier
- Munich
- Nice
- Prague
Besides the cancellations by easyJet, British Airways has been culling dozens of flights each day from its planned schedule – particularly to and from its largest base, London Heathrow.
All passengers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to new flights on the original day of departure if a seat is available, even if it is on a rival airline.
If the cancellation was announced less than two weeks in advance and the airline is responsible, they are also due cash compensation.