Airlines are having a torrid time this summer as they play catch-up with the massive post-pandemic demand for escapes from the UK.
British Airway s announced earlier this week that it will axe another 10,300 short-haul flights from now until the end of October.
The move takes the percentage of cancellations across the airline to a total of 13% this summer.
BA has been one of the worst affected carriers in terms of schedule disruption in recent months as the aviation industry battles increased demand and staff shortages.
But it is not the only airline impacted, with easyJet, Whizz and KLM forced to cancel flights, sometimes at short notice.
Which airlines are not cancelling flights?
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary might have warned of flight delays and cancellations being a regular occurrence this summer, but his budget airline has fared better than most.
He told Sky News last month that 99% of Ryanair flights were getting away.
However, he blamed shortages across airport staff, in departments such as traffic control, security and baggage handling, for delayed flights in recent weeks.
Unions have suggested Dublin-based Ryanair has outperformed its rivals due to holding onto staff during the coronavirus crisis when travel was severely curtailed.
During the virus travel restrictions, 30,000 jobs were cut by UK airlines.
Oliver Richardson from Unite told The Independent: “When you look at who is performing worst, it correlates with the companies that carried out the most redundancies.
“Ryanair agreed on no redundancies and a different position was taken by British Airways who lost 10,000 staff through redundancies. They got rid of too many people.”
So confident was Ryanair that the no-frills provider added a further 1,000 extra flights to its roster for July and August.
Other airlines deemed to be performing well amid the travel trouble include Jet2 and Tui Airways.
According to The Points Guy website, in June 2022, Jet2 cancelled only 11 of its 5,740 scheduled flights while Tui, which has had difficulties with departures at Manchester Airport, delivered 99.3% of its 4,000-odd flights.
Virgin Atlantic also landed all 887 of its scheduled long-haul departures from the UK in the same month.
What airlines are cancelling flights?
BA, as mentioned, has been forced to cut down the number of flights it will operate as it looks to get a grip on its delivery woes.
EasyJet has also struggled, scrapping thousands of summer flights in a bid to avoid last-minute cancellations.
The move was also in response to caps introduced by Gatwick and Amsterdam Schiphol airports.
In May, the carrier expected its capacity to be at around 97% of 2019 levels between July and September, but that was reduced to 90%.
In June, easyJet cancelled 4.6% of its 16,000 scheduled flights from the UK, with 742 routes binned.
There have been reports of 30-60 flights being abandoned per day, with some of those announcements coming only hours before travellers were due to take off.
The airline’s chief operating officer Peter Bellew resigned amid passenger anger at the firm’s performance, with the low-budget operator bottom of the table in percentage terms for cancelled flights last month.
Meanwhile, BA Cityflyer had a cancellation rate of 6.87% in June and KLM Cityhopper ended up on an even worse record of 7.27% despite offering less than 200 flights between them.
