EasyJet has warned there could be more travel disruption to come for holidaymakers.
Since Easter, airlines tackled a surge in holidaymakers jetting off on their first holiday since the pandemic. But many were met with travel chaos as flights were delayed and cancelled, with easyJet forced to scrap hundreds of flights.
The budget airline, along with others, has struggled with staffing issues as well as I.T. issues which led to fleets being grounded, some of which at short notice. However, as TravelWeekly reports, easyJet's chief executive Johan Lundgren claims operations have 'normalised' while also warning “some industry challenges” would continue through this summer.
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Still, he insisted that customers “can book with confidence," as he claimed the airline is operating as 'normal'.
He added: “We are running at 2019 levels of performance. We’re not complacent, but we’re confident the actions we’re taking are working.
On Tuesday, the airline released its trading report, revealing a loss of £114 million for the three months to June, a lot of it due to the disruption seen recently.
Lundgren said: “We have a stable operation now. The easyJet operation has normalised. Over this weekend [July 22-24] we operated 5,000 flights and only two were cancelled in France due to technical reasons.”
But Lundgren warned: “We continue to expect some industry challenges this summer. We see this as a one-off through the summer. I feel more confident about the things in our control. But it’s difficult to say there won’t be disruption going forward."
The chief executive went on to explain one of the reasons why: “Air traffic control remains a problem. If you have a shortage of air traffic controllers it only takes one or two not to show up because of Covid and there are flow restrictions on arrivals into airports.
“Then you have to make a judgment – if you send an aircraft is it going to come back because of the hours’ limits on crew?
“In some cases, just one person going sick leads to flow restrictions. You can’t plan for this. You can have more crew on call to cope with it, but you can’t plan.”
He went on: “There is an increasing level of covid. We’ve seen strikes and we’ve had weather-related events. You can’t do anything if a patch of Luton airport’s runway melts.
“It’s meaningless to start pointing fingers. There is no one in the industry not feeling the squeeze on this. There is no one who hasn’t felt the pressure. It’s not one sector that hasn’t been delivering, it has been tough on all fronts. There is not any part of the chain that has not felt the pressure.”
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