EasyJet has cancelled 1,700 flights from London Gatwick during the next three months due to air traffic control (ATC) issues including impending strikes.
The move came after European air traffic control body Eurocontrol last week warned that thousands of daily flights could be severely affected by strikes by ATC workers this summer.
EasyJet stressed that around 95 per cent of passengers on the affected flights during July, August and September had already been rebooked on to other flights.
The airline said in a statement that it reviewed flights on an “ongoing basis” and emphasised that it was still operating up to 1,800 flights per day.
"As Eurocontrol has stated, the whole industry is seeing challenging conditions this summer with more constrained airspace due to the war in Ukraine resulting in unprecedented ATC delays and further potential ATC strike action,” said an easyJet spokesperson.
"We have therefore made some pre-emptive adjustments to our programme consolidating a small number of flights at Gatwick, where we have multiple daily frequencies, in order to help mitigate these external challenges on the day of travel for our customers and we continue to operate around over 90,000 flights over this period.”
The cancellations by easyJet will remind business travellers of the problems the European aviation sector experienced last summer when several major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Schiphol and Frankfurt had to impose capacity caps on passengers due to a lack of staff.