easyJet were forced to cancel over 200 flights as Covid-19 cases surged across the company’s flight staff.
The budget airline has reportedly suspended 222 trips since Friday last week, with passengers stuck at the airport at the last minute as the situation exploded.
A recorded 62 flights set for takeoff on Monday were cancelled, with most of the flights serving notice of suspension on Saturday.
easyJet said it had tried to make up for staff shortages by calling in additional standby crew over the weekend, however the move proved fruitless as waves of Covid-19 results forced the company to make cancellations across its flight rosters.
“As a result of the current high rates of Covid infections across Europe, like all businesses easyJet is experiencing higher than usual levels of employee sickness,” said an easyJet spokesperson.
“We have made 62 pre-emptive cancellations for flights to and from the UK [for Monday] which represents a small proportion of [Monday’s] total flying programme which was planned to be more than 1,645 flights.”
“We cancelled the majority of these [over Saturday].”
UK airports experienced difficulties over the Easter weekend as high volumes of passengers made their way to the major departure site for the Easter holidays.
Passengers reported extended levels of congestion and failure to operate e-gates worked by Border Force to process boarding customers.
Fliers took to Twitter to vent their frustration over the malfunctioning gates, holding up lines for hours at a time as chaos continued at some of the UK’s busiest airports, including Heathrow and Manchester.
The Home Office confirmed that the gates were experiencing a technical issue, leaving passengers stranded at the airport for extended periods.