EasyJet has announced it has cancelled more flights ahead of the busy summer period.
The budget airline said it now expected to be running at 87% of its 2019 levels by the end of the month. EasyJet has been hit by staff shortages and flight caps at major airports as the airline industry continues its post pandemic recovery struggles.
A limit on flights has been introduced at major European airports such as London Gatwick and Amsterdam's Schipol. The airline operator has announced it is "proactively" cancelling flights after the caps.
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A spokesperson said: “In response to these caps and in order to build additional resilience, easyJet is proactively consolidating a number of flights across affected airports. This provides customers with advance notice and the potential to rebook on to alternative flights.”
The airline said it expects to be able to rebook “the majority” of passengers on to other departures, with “many being on the same day”. EasyJet admitted there will be a "cost impact" from the disruption, and the amount of money it spends to operate each seat per kilometre excluding fuel will "exceed" previous guidance.
It said: "We believe that these capacity/cost impacts are a one-off this summer as we would expect all parties to build greater resilience in time for 2023 peak periods."
Chief executive Johan Lundgren added: "Delivering a safe and reliable operation for our customers in this challenging environment is easyJet's highest priority and we are sorry that for some customers we have not been able to deliver the service they have come to expect from us.
"While in recent weeks the action we have taken to build in further resilience has seen us continue to operate up to 1,700 flights and carry up to a quarter of a million customers a day, the ongoing challenging operating environment has unfortunately continued to have an impact, which has resulted in cancellations.
"Coupled with airport caps, we are taking pre-emptive actions to increase resilience over the balance of summer, including a range of further flight consolidations in the affected airports, giving advance notice to customers, and we expect the vast majority to be rebooked on alternative flights within 24 hours.
"We believe this is the right action for us to take so we can deliver for all of our customers over the peak summer period in this challenging environment."
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