Passengers booked for 240 easyJet flights to and from Gatwick over the next 10 days have been notified that their flights have been canceled.
At the end of the week, when Britain’s largest budget airline stopped hundreds of flights, The Independent learned that easyJet had made a late decision to cancel many others at its largest base, Gatwick.
The airline is cutting 24 flights a day from Saturday, May 28 to Monday, June 6 inclusive. Many flights are heavily booked; the standard easyJet Airbus A320 seats 186 passengers; and The Independent estimates that even with a conservative estimate of 150 people booked for each ground flight, at least 36,000 passengers will be affected.
The cancellation of flights on Saturday includes key holiday connections to Italy, Portugal and Spain – both flights to Seville have been canceled.
Flights to both Agadir and Marrakesh in Morocco have been suspended.
The full list of canceled round trip trips for Saturday, May 28 is:
- Seville (2)
- Reykjavik
- Belfast City
- Budapest Copenhagen
- Munich
- Funchal
- Agadir
- Valencia
- Cagliari
- Marrakech
An easyJet spokesman told The Independent: “Next week we will operate about 1,700 flights a day, about a quarter of which will operate to and from Gatwick.
“We have decided to cancel in advance about 24 Gatwick flights a day from tomorrow, May 28 to June 6.
“We are very sorry for the late notification of some of these cancellations and the inconvenience caused to customers booked for these flights, but we believe that this is necessary to provide reliable services during this busy period.
“Customers will be informed from today and given the opportunity to book their flight or receive a refund and can apply for compensation in accordance with the regulations.”
The standard cancellation notice issued by easyJet encourages passengers to book again for an alternative easyJet flight or to accept a refund or voucher.
A passenger whose flight from Madeira to Gatwick on June 1 said: “We had to book again for Monday, two days earlier than planned, and we were given separate seats, despite the fact that we were traveling with our one-year-old child.
“Right now he’s sitting in two rows of us!” “
The Independent told him that easyJet has a strict obligation under European rules on air passenger rights to book a passenger with a competing airline if this is the only way to get them to their destination on the scheduled day of travel. There are flights with British Airways to Heathrow or Ryanair to Stansted on June 1, which easyJet has to pay for.
The airline also owes £ 220 in compensation – or, for flights over 1,500 km, £ 350 – to each passenger due to late notice. If all eligible people had to ask, the compensation bill would be £ 10 million.
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