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Wales Online
Wales Online
Entertainment
Brett Gibbons

Departures take-off from UK airports despite tight restrictions on seat sales

Almost 15 million travellers will take-off from UK airports this month - despite the daily cap on passengers using the country's biggest hub. There are scheduled to be 83,546 flight departures from all UK airports - equating to 14.6 million aircraft seats - even though numbers at Heathrow have been cut by 4,000 passengers a day.

These restrictions are expected to remain in place until the end of October. Even so, August 2022 is scheduled to be the busiest month for UK departures since October 2019 - showing that despite ticket sales and passengers restrictions - the recovery is underway, aviation analysts Cirium confirmed.

This is underlined by data showing UK departures up by 81 per cent this month compared to the corresponding period in 2021 and up 116 per cent against August 2020.

Departures remain at 80 per cent of August 2019 (pre-pandemic) levels. The largest airline, by departing flights, is scheduled to be easyJet, with more than 16,500 flights, followed by Ryanair, with around 13,000, British Airways (12,100) and Jet2 (6,000)

The largest destination from the UK is expected to be Dublin, with nearly 3,000 flights heading to the Irish capital, followed by Amsterdam, Palma de Mallorca and Malaga.

Further flight data published by leading travel intelligence company OAG has revealed Jet2.com was the only UK airline not to cancel any flights during the busy month of July. Despite the airline operating thousands of flights and carrying more than two million customers during July, OAG data shows that Jet2.com operated every flight without making a single cancellation.

The airline reported the busiest weekend in the company’s history, operating more than 800 flights to and from its 10 UK bases during the weekend of July 23-24. Chief executive Steve Heapy said: “This exhaustive data published by OAG is proof that Jet2.com is the airline that customers can trust.

"This summer is proving to be incredibly busy and because we prepared well in advance, it means we are flying millions of happy holidaymakers to and from their destinations without having to cancel their plans. There has been a lot of focus on the disruption affecting our industry, but this data shows that it is not all bad news.

"Thanks to our team of brilliant colleagues, we can proudly say that we operated every single flight despite July being the busiest month in our entire history.”

For more stories from where you live, visit InYourArea.

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