Flights from Gatwick are more likely to be canceled this year than at any other major UK airport.
The rate is 10 times worse than that of Stansted, the best-performing British center.
More than 3% of planned flights from Gatwick were not carried out, compared to 0.3% of those from Stansted, according to figures from air travel intelligence company OAG provided exclusively to Sky News.
June was Gatwick’s worst month this year – one in 14 flights from the airport was canceled.
Data is provided to OAG from airlines, government agencies and other sources, and a cancellation is defined as any flight that an airline has issued to operate and that has not been canceled at least 48 hours prior to the way out.
A spokesman for Gatwick Airport said it regrets any cancellations and disruptions to passengers and explained that it will carefully increase capacity over the coming months “so that airlines can use more reliable flight programs and passengers experience a better service level “.
He said this would help both airlines and ground service companies, which work for airlines, reduce the number of flights they need to manage.
Which airlines have canceled most flights?
Ryanair was the best-performing airline in the world: it has only canceled 0.3% of flights so far this year.
British Airways is the worst performing UK airline. With 3.5%, you are more than 12 times more likely to have canceled a BA flight than a Ryanair flight if you expected to fly during the first six months of 2022.
These data cover flights until July 10 and do not include the additional 10,300 cancellations announced by the company, which affect flights that must take off before the end of October.
Globally, Shanghai-based China Eastern has been by far the hardest hit, a product of the city’s severe confinement since March.
A BA spokesman attributed some of the problems to the severe storms of February, when one in seven of its flights was canceled within a period of one week, the maximum of the year. It also suffered a computer failure in late March, which coincided with the cancellation of a tenth of flights shortly before.
The airline also highlighted the increased exposure to global factors such as the Russian war in Ukraine and COVID’s continued restrictions in Asia, compared to easyJet and Ryanair which only fly to Europe.
Figures show that during the peak of the 2020 pandemic, easyJet was the world’s most affected airline.
It canceled more than 50% of its 200,000 scheduled flights that year and more than 99% of all flights scheduled to take off in April 2020.
OAG says airlines may have blocked consumers from booking many of these flights during the frantic first period of the pandemic, although they were not formally canceled until less than 48 hours before check-in time. scheduled takeoff.
These flights are included in the dataset, but the outage is unlikely to have affected as many people as more recent cancellations.
Why are COVID unrestricted flights still canceled?
Low overall percentages mean you are still unlikely to cancel your flight if you planned to travel this year, although it has been worse at different times, peaking in February, when more than 1 in 20 flights from the United Kingdom were discarded.
One of the key reasons for the ongoing disruption is staffing.
Kully Sandhu, managing director of Aviation Recruitment Network Ltd, said the number of vacancies she is trying to fill for positions such as baggage handlers, cabin crew and cleaners had doubled since 2019, while the number of applicants had been halved.
Gatwick Airport told us that its plans to manage the next few months were put in place because “an airport review found that several Gatwick-based companies are operating with a severe shortage of staff resources during the summer vacation period “.
One of the things that discourages people is related to safety requirements for working at airports. Applicants must provide a detailed five-year employment history, which is particularly rare for entry-level positions.
Sandhu said job postings at certain airports are also more popular than others, depending on the demographics in the area.
John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, said: “When we entered COVID, the airlines caused a lot of people to be fired. During this two-year period of leave, those people found work elsewhere and they have not returned to the industry.
“Of those who have returned, their security policies will have expired. They will have to be reviewed again and go through the same process as two years ago.
“We didn’t get out of the blockade until the end of March when it comes to the airline industry in Europe, so there are a lot of people who have to go through the process.”
In today’s strong job market, it is easier and faster to get another job, often with better hours, elsewhere, Sandhu explained.
He also said that Brexit had meant that workers in Europe, particularly those who only came to offer temporary labor during the busiest seasons, no longer applied for the same number.
How does it compare to before the pandemic?
The latest figures indicate that a flight in 2022 is 2.5 times more likely to be canceled than one booked during the same period in 2019, but there have been major improvements compared to the peak of the pandemic.
In April and May 2020, more than three-quarters of flights in the UK were canceled and the number of scheduled flights has not yet recovered to a ‘normal’ level.
How does the UK compare to other countries?
The UK has had worse results than other major European countries that have had more than 200,000 flights scheduled this year so far.
But the United States, Canada, Indonesia and Turkey have performed even worse. Grant said the U.S. and Canada have only raised COVID’s travel requirements in recent weeks and noted that Indonesia was a very closed market, as Asian countries applied their own rules for travel, “creating almost confinements. totals “.
The hard block means that of the world’s largest airports, the 20 worst performing are all from China.
More than four out of five flights from the two Shanghai airports were canceled between April and May, the same proportion that have been canceled in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
How can you avoid being affected?
Grant recommends booking away from rush hours and the busiest airports.
He said: “One of the interesting patterns is that if you choose to leave from 10am to 2pm, airports tend to be less congested. There is more space between scheduled departures and we are seeing lower cancellation rates.
“Of course, don’t try to board the first flight to your destination because that’s when all the airlines in Europe are sending hundreds of planes into the sky, between 6 and 8 in the morning.
“Another thing to consider is flying from a smaller airport where there are fewer flights and fewer airlines operating, so there is more room to accommodate these delays.”
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