EasyJet cancelled more than 200 flights over the weekend with disruption expected to last into this week, leaving some passengers stranded amid travel chaos at some of Britain’s biggest airports. The airline blamed the problems on high levels of sickness among employees caused by Covid, with at least 222 trips axed since Friday, April 1.
It said it had made efforts to offset staff shortages by “rostering” additional standby crew on the weekend but was forced to make “additional cancellations for (Sunday) and tomorrow”. A total of 62 flights scheduled for Monday have been pulled, the majority of which were announced at short notice on Saturday, April 2.
An easyJet spokesperson said: “As a result of the current high rates of Covid infections across Europe, like all businesses easyJet is experiencing higher than usual levels of employee sickness. We have taken action to mitigate this through the rostering of additional standby crew this weekend, however, with the current levels of sickness, we have also decided to make some cancellations in advance which were focused on consolidating flights where we have multiple frequencies so customers have more options to rebook their travel, often on the same day.
