Britain worst in Europe for axed f lights

BRITAIN is the joint-worst major European country for flight cancellations, industry figures showed yesterday.

Passengers have had 2 per cent of their flights axed this year, a figure matched only by Germany. France lost 1.5 per cent and Italy 1.1 per cent.

The crisis was worst in late February, when more than 5.5 per cent of UK services were cancelled. It was 3 per cent at the start of this month.

The figures, from travel intelligence firm OAG, mean that a flight in 2022 is 2.5 times more likely to be cancelled than one booked during the same period in 2019.

British Airways has scrapped the most UK flights (3.5 per cent) – nearly 12 times as many as budget rival Ryanair (0.3 per cent), which was the best-performing major carrier worldwide. EasyJet axed 2.8 per cent.

Gatwick was the worst airport, with a cancellation rate ten times higher than Stansted, the best-performing UK hub.

More than 3 per cent of flights from Gatwick didn’t go ahead, compared with Stansted’s 0.3 per cent. June was the worst month this year for the West Sussex airport, with one in every 14 flights not taking off.

Most were easyJet which has axed more than 10,000 services this summer.

BA, which also operates at Gatwick but mainly lands and takes off from Heathrow, has cancelled more than 30,000 flights this summer. The data, from January 1 to July 10, does not include 10,300 flights axed by BA last week for later this summer.

Both Gatwick and Heathrow have capped departures in a bid to avoid chaotic scenes seen in recent months, including lastminute cancellations and huge queues at check-in desks and baggage collection halls.

Heathrow chief John HollandKaye has warned disruption could drag on for 18 months, due partly to a tight labour market and struggles to attract and retain recruits.

An easyJet spokesman said: ‘The UK Government had the most onerous travel restrictions in Europe and, as the UK’s largest airline, we were disproportionately affected.’

A Gatwick spokesman said capacity would be increased carefully. A BA spokesman attributed disruption to storms in February, when one in seven of its flights was cancelled in a week. It also suffered an IT fault at the end of March.

John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, said: ‘When we entered Covid, airlines made a lot of people redundant.

‘During that two-year furlough period, those people found jobs elsewhere and have not returned to the industry. Of those that have returned, their security policies will have expired. They need to be vetted again and go through the same process as they did two years ago.’

‘Tight labour market’