Holiday upset for passengers as easyJet cancels hundreds of summer flights from Gatwick Airport
Tens of thousands due to fly in or out of Gatwick will have to rethink their travel plans, ITV News' Pablo Taylor reports
Passengers planning to travel abroad this summer are facing disruption as easyJet has cancelled hundreds of flights from Gatwick Airport.
The airline operator said it has "consolidated" around 1,700 flights during July, August and September, travelling to and from Gatwick Airport.
It's believed that around 180,000 passengers are affected.
EasyJet blamed constrained airspace over Europe and ongoing air traffic control difficulties, which are causing frequent cancellations.
The firm added 95% of affected passengers had been rebooked onto alternative flights.
Travel expert Simon Calder said the flight cancellations mean 300,000 seats will be taken out of the market which will push up prices for everyone else.
A spokesperson for easyJet said: “We are currently operating up to around 1800 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.
"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 and 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% of 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.”
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