Low-cost carrier easyJet was one of the worst affected, saying it cancelled around 60 UK flights on Tuesday and expected to pull a similar number in the coming days. It cancelled more than 200 at the weekend and another 62 on Monday.
“It’s ironic that the very desire to get people booking again, post-pandemic, is causing more difficult transport issues than those created by COVID itself,” he said. British Airways cancelled 662 flights in the week to Sunday, aviation analytics firm Cirium said, though that includes long-haul flights suspended due to sanctions and restrictions, such as on Russia and COVID-affected parts of Asia respectively. BA declined to provide a figure for cancellations.
But delays in government-required checks for new staff were hampering the ramp up of flights into summer, he said, and it had already trimmed its planned increase in services by about 20 flights a day until the end of May.Queues at Manchester Airport, Britain’s third busiest after London’s Heathrow and Gatwick, snaked out of one terminal on Tuesday, and passengers complained of hours waiting at the baggage carousel.