Tens of thousands of easyJet customers have had their holiday plans disrupted after the budget airline axed a huge number of flights this summer.
The airline has cancelled 1,700 summer flights in July, August and September, many of them from its main UK base Gatwick, impacting 180,000 passengers.
Rather than cancelling services at the last minute as has happened at points so far this summer, easyJet is pre-emptively moving flights around.
While 95% of customers impacted by the changes have already been put on another flight, around 9,000 are currently without a replacement.
A spokesperson for easyJet has said that all airlines make adjustments to their schedules, and that it has "consolidated a small number" of its daily 1,800 flights over the remainder of summer.
Have you been impacted by the changes? Email webtravel@reachplc.com
The 1,700 changed is from a total of 90,000 flights over the summer period. On Saturday alone, easyJet grounded more than 40 flights to and from Gatwick, affecting more than 6,000 passengers.
The airline says the cancellations are not due to pilot or crew shortages, claiming it is fully staffed with more employees working on its planes than ever before.
EasyJet has blamed the air traffic controller situation across Europe for the delays, with the threat of widespread strikes and reduced air capacity due to the war in Ukraine squeezing schedules.
Gatwick has been worst impacted by the changes due to it being easyJet's largest airport base and where it operates a quarter of its fleet.
“We are currently operating up to around 1,800 flights and carrying around 250,000 customers per day with more crew and pilots flying than ever before and like all airlines, we review our flights on an ongoing basis," a spokesperson for easyJet told The Mirror.
"As Eurocontrol has stated, the whole industry is seeing challenging conditions this summer with more constrained air space due to the war in Ukraine resulting in unprecedented ATC delays, as well as further potential ATC strike action.
"We have therefore made some pre-emptive adjustments to our programme consolidating a small number of flights at Gatwick, where we have multiple daily frequencies, in order to help mitigate these external challenges on the day of travel for our customers and we continue to operate around over 90,000 flights over this period.
“Customers whose flights are affected are being informed, with 95% customers being rebooked onto an alternative flight and all customers provided with the option to rebook or receive a refund. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused.”
Passengers caught up in the changes are protected by European aviation laws which give them the right to travel on any other airline that has seats available on the original day of travel. EasyJet must pay for the new ticket.
If a flight is cancelled less than two weeks before it is due to depart, then the affected passenger may be entitled to compensation, unless a suitable alternate flight is found.
We've got a run down of your rights if you find yourself swept up in air chaos this summer.
While the majority of easyJet passengers may not be too badly impacted by the changes, the implication for the wider aviation industry of the cancellations is not a positive one.
Such a large reduction in the number of planes flying this summer may be positive from an environmental perspective, but it will reduce the overall capacity which will lead to an increase in ticket price.
