Flight cancellations and lengthy delays at UK airports mar start to peak weekend

On the busiest day of the year for air traffic in Europe, thousands of passengers are facing lengthy delays. Some easyJet passengers at London Gatwick and Manchester have been told their flights have been cancelled just hours before they were due to depart for mainland Europe and the Mediterranean.

Scores of flights were cancelled on Thursday, including at least a dozen easyJet services to and from Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

EasyJet has so far suspended at least 10 flights to and from the UK. Passengers flying to Palma from Manchester and Gatwick were told in each case that a “technical problem with the aircraft could not be resolved”.

Flight cancellations between Manchester and Amsterdam and Paris have been blamed on “poor weather conditions in Berlin”. Several flights from the German capital were cancelled on Thursday evening.

EasyJet has not given any reason for the cancellation of the Gatwick-Naples flight.

The five corresponding incoming flights are also suspended.

In any case, it appears that the passengers were notified between 3 and 4 a.m., by which time they were already at the airport or on their way to it.

An easyJet spokesperson said: “Due to the impact of air traffic control restrictions in place across Europe for much of yesterday, like all airlines operating in European airspace, some of our flights were unable to operate, impacting today’s operations due to aircraft being off-base.

“We have done everything we can to minimise the impact on our customers, providing hotel accommodation and meals as well as a refund or transfer to an alternative flight and we advise our customers that they will be reimbursed for their expenses if they have to make their own arrangements.

“The safety and well-being of our customers is our top priority and while this is beyond our control, we apologize for the inconvenience.”

Under air passenger rights rules, passengers are entitled to be flown to their destination today, but the last Friday in June is still one of the busiest days of the year for travel and finding seats on any airline will be difficult.

For many Wizz Air passengers, the problem is extreme delays.

Nearly 200 Wizz Air passengers who were due to fly home from Sicily to Gatwick on Wednesday finally took off on Friday morning after a technical delay.

Among the passengers on Wizz Air flight 5794 from Catania was ITV News journalist Joe Coshan.

He said The Independentt: “We were supposed to fly out of Catania at 11pm on Wednesday night. By the time we got to the airport, it was delayed until midnight. But we didn’t get on the plane until then.

“After an hour on the plane, we were told there was a problem with the plane, that an engineer had deemed it unsafe to fly and that we would be put on a plane the next morning.”

At this point, all passengers should have been given hotel rooms. But while some, including Mr Coshan, booked their own hotels, others were told there was no room to stay.

The flight had originally been rescheduled for Thursday at 1 p.m., then postponed to 8 p.m. Passengers were told they would have to spend an extra night in Catania and that the flight would depart at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. The plane finally took off at 7:15 a.m.

Wizz Air is experiencing extreme delays at its London airports, with a flight from Gatwick to Podgorica in Montenegro currently seven hours late and a flight from Luton to Prague delayed by 12 hours.

Three departures on Thursday evening from Luton to Balkan airports – Varna in Bulgaria, and Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca in Romania – finally took off after 2am on Friday, with delays following for today’s flights.

Eurocontrol said The Independent On Thursday, the network “is impacted by severe convective weather covering central and southeastern areas.”

Friday 28 June 2019 was the busiest day in Eurocontrol’s history, and the corresponding date five years later is expected to see more flights than any other day in 2024.

The Independent asked easyJet and Wizz Air for answers.