Easyjet has cancelled hundreds of flights over the weekend, with continued disruption expected to last into this week.
More than 200 flights have been axed, leaving some passengers stranded, after the airline reports high levels of coronavirus sickness among staff. Today, on Monday, April 4, a total of 62 flights scheduled have been pulled with the majority announced at short notice over the weekend.
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.
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"Unfortunately it has been necessary to make some additional cancellations for today and tomorrow. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to customers on affected flights.
"We have made 62 pre-emptive cancellations for flights to and from the UK for tomorrow which represents a small proportion of tomorrow’s total flying programme which was planned to be more than 1,645 flights. We cancelled the majority of these yesterday."
It has since been confirmed, by the PA news agency, that at least 222 flights were cancelled across Saturday and Sunday. These cancellations have lead to some travellers being stuck abroad with no alternative routes home offered by the airline.
Simon Rudkins, 50, said he was due to return from a ski trip in the Alps with his family when the airline contacted him with less than 10 hours notice saying their flight was cancelled. He said: "We called easyJet asking for alternatives.
“We basically got told ‘no, there’s nothing, no flights at all. The best you can do is fly tomorrow. I probably wouldn’t go near easyJet (again). Not because of the fact they’ve had to cancel a flight, but because they don’t care and there was no explanation given."
