Almost one million holidaymakers will jet off this weekend aboard 5,076 flights scheduled to depart from UK airports. However, despite more than 900,000 passengers booked to travel, the total is the lowest so far in July.
Airport capacity caps and airline cancellations continue to cause widespread disruption and are blamed for the dip in passenger traffic, according to data from aviation analyst Cirium and booking platform Trip.com.
Ahead of the start of the summer holidays and a boom in flights, Cirium and Trip.com have revealed the scale of the take-off. Compared to the equivalent weekend last year, flights are up 62 per cent, and up 171 per cent compared to 2020.
However, they remain down on pre-pandemic levels by flights dipping by 18 per cent compared with the weekend of July 27-28, 2019. Low-cost airline easyJet will operate the highest number of UK departures this weekend (967), followed by Ryanair, British Airways, Jet2 and TUI.
According to Trip.com, UK holidaymakers continue to favour short-haul trips, with nine of their top 10 destinations within Europe and demand for short-haul travel two and a half times higher than for long-haul flights. Across the whole of Europe, the increase in short-haul summer bookings is a staggering 27 times higher than for long-haul.
Continued airport disruption has seen the popularity of staycations once again rise with Trip.com reporting a leap of bookings for domestic trips. London takes top spot for the most popular destination in the UK and Ireland, followed closely by Manchester and Dublin.
Meanwhile, flights from European airports remain 16 per cent down this month, when compared to July 2019. Albania, Armenia and Greece are some of the best performing countries, with flights this month up 30 per cent, eight per cent and six per cent respectively compared to July 2019
On the other hand, Ukraine, Slovenia and Latvia have seen flights in July 2022 fall by as much as 97 per cent, 58 per cent and 40 per cent respectively compared to pre-pandemic levels of July 2019.
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