Scots holidaymakers were left stranded at airports for hours in Easter break chaos after EasyJet axed hundreds of flights at short notice.
Staff shortages led to cancelled flights and hours-long delays over the weekend and the carnage continued on Monday.
The airline called off over 200 flights over the weekend and a further 62 flights were pulled yesterday - including two from Edinburgh Airport.
The budget carrier said there had been high levels of sickness caused by Covid and insisted efforts were made to ‘roster’ additional standby staff on Saturday and Sunday, but a number of flights continued to be cancelled.
Meanwhile British Airways cancelled at least a further six flights last minute on Monday due to "coronavirus-related staff shortages".
The last minute cancellations left passengers stranded - including customers at Scotland’s major airports as flights both in and out of the country were affected.
Scottish crime writer Val McDermid was one of those caught up in the chaos.
McDermid said she was forced to spend seven hours at Edinburgh Airport following delays to her EasyJet flights.
In a post on Twitter she said: “In the last three days EasyJet have delayed three flights, meaning I had to completely reroute one journey, miss two connections and spend seven hours in Edinburgh Airport.
“And at no point has anyone been available to help the poor passengers rebook or reroute. And there’s no comeback.”
Meanwhile, other commuters took to social media to explain their frustration as they were left scrambling about to find alternative means of travel.
Abhigyan Khargharia said: "So EasyJet just randomly cancelled my flight to Birmingham, disrupting my well planned travel itinerary.
"I can't afford to stay two nights to travel a day earlier. No buses from Edinburgh or Glasgow in the appropriate times and trains, obviously, are out of the question (££££)."
Simon Hall was another affected after his flight from Birmingham to the capital was scrapped.
He said: "After changing flight schedule twice to Edinburgh, Easyjet has now decided to cancel and offer me a flight two days earlier than required? .... I guess I'm driving then. Ugghhh."
Others were left in the dark as to whether their flight was affected as the headed to the airport.
Catherine Brown said: "Hey EasyJet, can you help me with EZY807? My app says it’s still flying, but Edinburgh airport say it’s cancelled. Would be helpful to know which it is."
And Kirsty, who was hoping to catch a flight down south on Tuesday, said: "Supposed to be flying Edinburgh to London Gatwick tomorrow and just been hearing about the EasyJet cancellations and yes am flying EasyJet.
"Checked the flights today and the one of them was cancelled this morning. Keeping fingers crossed they don't cancel mine tomorrow."
A spokesperson for easyJet said: “As a result of the current high rates of Covid infections across Europe, like all businesses easyJet is experiencing higher than usual levels of employee sickness.
“We have taken action to mitigate this through the rostering of additional standby crew this weekend, however, with the current levels of sickness we have also decided to make some cancellations in advance which were focused on consolidating flights where we have multiple frequencies so customers have more options to rebook their travel, often on the same day.
“Unfortunately it has been necessary to make some additional cancellations for today and tomorrow. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to customers on affected flights.
“We have made 62 pre-emptive cancellations for flights to and from the UK for tomorrow which represents a small proportion of tomorrow’s total flying programme which was planned to be more than 1,645 flights.
“We cancelled the majority of these yesterday.”
Meanwhile, British Airways' six cancelled flights added to those axed due to last week’s decision by the airline to reduce its schedule until the end of May to boost reliability.
In a statement the airline apologised to their customers.
A spokesperson said: "Aviation has been one of the industries worst hit by the pandemic and airlines and airports are experiencing the same issues rebuilding their operations while managing the continuing impact of Covid. We are also building a completely new subsidiary at Gatwick while increasing the size of our schedule at Heathrow.
"So while the vast majority of our flights continue to operate as planned, as a precaution we've slightly reduced our schedule between now and the end of May as we ramp back up.
"We've apologised to customers who are affected by this and to limit the inconvenience have re-booked them onto earlier or later flights on the same day they were originally due to travel where possible. We're also offering them the opportunity to book onto an alternative flight or request a full refund."
