UK flight cancellations and Eurostar outages leave 'tens of thousands stranded abroad'

Major airlines including British Airways, easyJet and Tui pulled flights from schedules

Passengers queue to check-in at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5. PA

Flight cancellations have wreaked havoc on thousands of British holidaymakers and caused many to be stranded overseas following the Bank Holiday weekend.

British Airways, easyJet, Tui Airways and Wizz Air were forced to pull flights from their schedules as a surge in demand for travel amid severe staff shortages continues to pose challenges for carriers.

It sparked a scramble from holidaymakers to get home in time to return to work or school on Monday morning, which also coincided with a Tube strike in London.

The four-day weekend in the UK to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee coincided with a school half-term holiday and resulted in a massive surge in demand for overseas trips. Airports were crammed with passengers, many of whom faced hours-long queues as well as flight delays and cancellations.

After cancelling dozens of flights at the weekend, easyJet scrapped a further 26 due to arrive at or depart from Gatwick Airport on Monday. These included journeys from destinations such as Bilbao, Madrid and Seville in Spain, Milan and Palermo in Italy, Geneva and Zurich in Switzerland, and Malta.

British Airways cut more than 100 short-haul flights at Heathrow Airport on Monday, although the airline said that passengers affected were given advance notice.

Tui Airways is cancelling six daily flights to and from Manchester Airport until the end of June in a bid to improve services.

Aviation data firm Cirium said 225 departures from UK airports were cancelled between Monday and Friday last week. That compares with 24 during the corresponding half-term week last year.

Many people who had their flights from mainland Europe to Britain cancelled booked trips on Eurostar only for services to be called off owing to power supply problems.

Travel consultancy PC Agency estimated that at least 15,000 passengers were affected by “last-minute changes” to flights on Sunday.

Chief executive Paul Charles said the alternations had “major knock-on effects” and “it will take three days to clear the backlog”.

Travel commentator and broadcaster Simon Calder told GB News there were “widespread cancellations” on Monday but easyJet flights in and out of Gatwick were by far the most affected.

“As a result, tens of thousands of people this morning are stranded out of position and a long way from where they need to be, and, of course, that is causing immense stress for people who are due back,” he said.

Grant Shapps, the UK’s Transport Secretary, on Sunday called for all holidaymakers to be given automatic refunds for cancelled foreign trips like they are entitled to for delayed domestic trains.

But Mr Calder said refunds are low down on the agenda for people who have found themselves stranded abroad and as a result missed work and school.

“They don’t want refunds, they want to be flown home,” Mr Calder said. “Getting their money back is the least of their concerns.”

One man named Jidi took to Twitter to call easyJet an “absolute disgrace of a company” after his flight from Slovenia was cancelled “while people were waiting in line to check bags in”.

“Put me on a flight home for Thursday and then only put me in a hotel until this morning,” he said. “Avoid using this company at all costs.”

A woman named Issy tweeted that easyJet had cancelled her flight eight hours before its scheduled departure and said "I can't fly back to Bristol from any German airport until Friday".

Nathan Possante tweeted a similar message of disappointment, saying easyJet cancelled his flight hours before he had been due to go to the airport.

“EasyJet thanks for the 4am message to tell us that our 9.45am flight is cancelled,” he tweeted. “A great way to wake up and plenty of time to reorganise another flight.”

Matt Wheeler, 37, a train driver from Nottingham, said he and his partner had to make emergency childcare arrangements after finding out their easyJet flight home from Amsterdam had been cancelled on Monday morning.

“It’s a farce… didn’t know about the cancellation until we arrived at the airport at 3.30am, no easyJet staff or any staff that could help us,” Mr Wheeler told the PA news agency.

“We now have to try and arrange family members to pick our kids up from school/childminders this afternoon and then have them overnight and take them to school tomorrow.

“They’ll have to take time off work [and] we will now miss a day’s work tomorrow as we won’t be home.”

Rex Glensy, 52, was among the Eurostar passengers affected by the power outage. On Sunday he was trying to get from Paris to London and said the lack of updates have caused “a black hole of information and [allowed] misinformation to flourish”.

“Delays happen and you can’t get too angry at that. What has been annoying however, is the complete lack of communication from Eurostar,” the film producer from London told the PA news agency.

Those heading to the UK described waiting at Gare du Nord station in Paris for more than eight hours, as Eurostar advised passengers not to travel on Sunday unless their journey was essential.

A Eurostar spokesman said "due to a problem with the overhead power supply near Paris, all services to and from Paris are subject to delays and cancellations".

A spokeswoman for Eurostar on Monday told The National that the power supply issue affecting services in Paris had been resolved, and that services were running normally with the exception of some trains delayed by 15 minutes on departure.

EasyJet pulled around 37 flights from its schedule on Monday, including 26 to and from Gatwick.

“EasyJet is operating over 1,700 flights today carrying almost 300,000 customers,” said a spokeswoman for the airline.

“Unfortunately, due to the ongoing challenging operating environment around 37 flights have been cancelled today ahead of customers arriving at the airport. We are very sorry and fully understand the disruption this will have caused for our customers.”

The representative said passengers would be given options to rebook their flights or receive a refund as well as hotel accommodation and meals.

“Our customer service hours and hotel accommodation sourcing have been extended to support impacted customers and help get them to their destination as soon as possible,” she added. “Once again, we are very sorry to customers impacted by the cancellations today.”

UK airline passengers have for months faced intermittent disruption as the aviation industry gets back to normal following two years of Covid-19 travel restrictions.

Airlines, airports and ground handling companies repeatedly called for sector-specific financial support during the Covid-19 pandemic as government travel restrictions suppressed demand.

Thousands of workers were laid off and employers are now struggling to recruit staff and obtain the necessary security clearances.

Mr Shapps has rejected calls to open the door to more “cheap” overseas workers in a bid to relieve the pressure on the aviation sector.

Asked whether he would temporarily allow more foreign workers into the industry to alleviate staffing pressures, told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “The answer can’t always be to reach for the lever marked ‘More immigration’. There is not some pull that is going to relieve this.”

Downing Street said ministers and officials had been meeting with aviation industry leaders and Border Force bosses to increase “resilience for the sector throughout the summer” to avert further travel chaos.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said it was ultimately down to the aviation industry to address staff shortages.

“We fully understand that the aviation industry – like many others – has faced significant challenges during the pandemic,” the spokesman said.

“But ultimately they are responsible for making sure they have enough staff to meet demand and we have been clear they must step up recruitment to make sure disruption is kept to a minimum.”