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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
National
Michelle Cullen

Four more Aer Lingus flights cancelled today and tomorrow due to 'staff illness'

Four more Aer Lingus flights to and from Dublin Airport have been cancelled today and tomorrow due to 'staff illness'.

The airline has been forced to cancel a number of flights over the past few weeks due to industrial action in Europe and Covid related absentees.

Aer Lingus cancelled flights to Frankfurt and Boston this morning, as well as their respective return flights.

READ MORE: Leona Maguire to be reunited with golf bag lost at Dublin Airport

On Monday, Aer Lingus had to cancel a flight to San Francisco due to an "unexpected illness" among the crew.

A return flight from London Heathrow to Shannon Airport was also cancelled due to Heathrow's mandated capacity reduction.

An Aer Lingus Airbus A320 passenger jet aircraft taxis at Dublin Airport in Dublin, Ireland. (gettyimages.ie)

Officials at London's Heathrow Airport last week announced they were capping the number of departures from the airport each day to 100,000 until September.

The measures were taken in an attempt to alleviate pressure due to staffing shortages .

As a result, Aer Lingus has cancelled several services that either departed or arrived at Heathrow Airport.

Shannon, Dublin and Cork airports have all been impacted by flight cancellations.

The airline stated it "deeply regrets" the impact of these mandated cancellations and said they were "entirely out of our control".

It said cancellations impacted just over 1 per cent of Aer Lingus flights in June and that it was working to re-accommodate affected passengers.

Aer Lingus has now cancelled at least 17 weekend flights, with more due to be pulled before the end of next week.

While some of these are due to Heathrow caps, industrial action at Bordeaux and Lyon in France and Pisa in Italy has also caused further disruptions.

Other return flights from London Gatwick and Munich in Germany have also been cancelled due to Covid-19 infections among staff.

The news comes after Luton Airport was forced to suspend all flights on Monday for three hours due to the heatwave temperatures being experienced in the UK.

Airlines including EasyJet, Wizz Air, Ryanair, and TUI were all affected.

As temperatures reached 36C, the tarmac began to melt on the runway, making it unsafe for scheduled planes to take off.

The last flight that was able to take off before the airport suspended departures was at 3.07 pm when a spokesperson announced that all flights outbound were suspended and any flights scheduled to arrive at Luton airport were being diverted.

Nearly three hours had passed when an airport spokesperson confirmed that flights leaving the airport would resume at 5.40 pm. However, inbound flights continued to be suspended or diverted from the Airport.

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