A study of new data reveals 11.5 million passengers were affected by UK flight delays between 1 June and 31 August, with Easyjet, British Airways and Flybe experiencing the worst disruption.
According to passenger rights organisation AirHelp, there were tens of thousands of flight delays or cancellations between 1 June and 31 August.
Easyjet suffered the highest number of disrupted services at 19,400 across the three-month period, but the carrier was affected by a number of external strikes – including walk-outs by air traffic controllers across Scotland and security guards at Luton airport.
Wednesday, 7 August saw a particular spike in disruption after BA was forced to delay or cancel more than 470 flights due to an IT glitch. Discounting this incident, the airline recorded an average of 170 disrupted services a day during the period.
Although Ryanair was able to mitigate any impact on flights during UK pilot strikes, the data analysed by AirHelp ranked it fourth, with 5,300 flights delayed or cancelled throughout the summer – an average of 55 per day.
Paloma Salmeron, air passenger rights expert at AirHelp, commented: “This study reveals the true extent of the disruptions that air passengers faced during the summer months. Most people will forgive the occasional unavoidable delay or cancellation, provided they are treated fairly, but they should not have to contend with disruption at this scale. We hope these statistics encourage the airline industry to improve.”
The European airline industry has faced a challenging couple of years due to air traffic control strikes and staff shortages. Earlier this year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) called on European governments to improve the region’s air traffic control management after data from Eurocontrol found 20 per cent of flights were delayed by an average of 17 minutes in June, the majority of which were caused by a lack of capacity driven by “inadequate staffing, inflexible rostering and an inability to react to disruptive events”.
Short-term contingency plans were introduced last year to reorganise Europe’s airspace, but IATA said the re-routing of aircraft from problematic areas increases travel time for passengers and produces unnecessary CO2 emissions.
airhelp.com