As thousands of easyJet passengers woke up on Monday morning hundreds of miles from where they expected to be, the airline has announced a “raft of new initiatives to help customers”.
On Sunday easyJet cancelled 16 departures to and from Gatwick because of staff sickness. Some other flights were severely delayed.
On Monday, though, the airline has promised a “new family customer helpline launched to serve 1.55 million families flying this summer”.
It is aimed at families with children under 12 years old and “will enable them to get through directly to dedicated customer service team members”.
Another 350 easyJet call-centre staff have been recruited, with customer service opening hours extended for the summer. A new contact centre has been opened in Milan. Lines are open between 6am and 11pm.
“Twilight bag drop” will be reintroduced at Gatwick and Bristol, to allow passengers who are staying at airport hotels to check in their luggage the night before. The service, which is free, is intended to ease pressure on bag drop in the busiest early morning spell. Passengers who use it can go straight to the security checkpoint.
Terminal staff known as “helping hands” will patrol easyJet’s key UK airports – Gatwick, Luton, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh – daily except Mondays and Tuesdays until 4 September.
Some will be employees from easyJet’s head office in Luton.
The chief executive of easyJet, Johan Lundgren, said: “Delivering a reliable operation this summer and providing a positive experience and the help our customers need when we take them away on their holidays is easyJet’s highest priority.
“We are introducing this new range of initiatives to provide additional support for over 6.2 million customers flying with us over the holidays, many of whom we know are taking their first long-awaited trip since the before the pandemic.
“By introducing new services, extending our customer service hours and adding more people to our customer service team than ever before, we are ensuring our customers have the support they need when they travel with us this summer.”
Britain’s biggest budget airline has cancelled thousands of flights to and from its largest base, Gatwick, with advance warning given to most passengers. But short-notice cancellations on Sunday included flights to Berlin, La Rochelle and Malaga.
A spokesperson for easyJet said: “We took the decision to proactively cancel some flights in advance of customers arriving at the airport due to higher than usual sickness levels impacting our ground handler DHL.
“Affected customers were notified and provided with transfers to alternative flights free of charge or a refund along with accommodation and meals if required. We would like to apologise to passengers for any inconvenience.”
Passengers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to be flown to their destination on the same day, on any airline that has seats available if the cancelling carrier has none.
The 6.10am easyJet departure from London Gatwick to Dalaman in Turkey left nearly 11 hours late due to a technical problem. An evening departure to Antalya was delayed overnight.
On Sunday easyJet operated around 1,500 flights. One in four of them was to or from Gatwick.
Wizz Air cancelled flights from Gatwick to Chania in Crete as well as four Italian cities: Milan Malpensa, Naples, Rome and Venice.
The Air Malta lunchtime flight to Luqa airport in Malta departed 12 hours late on Sunday, for a second day running.
