More than 10,000 passengers stranded after BA and easyJet flight cancellations

Exclusive: ‘To make us sit on a plane for three hours to then cancel the flight and give us zero alternatives is an absolute disgrace’

Passengers at Zante airport in Greece, from where several flights were delayed by two hours or more (Simon Calder)

Passengers flying to and from the UK’s two busiest airports on the biggest airlines have once again endured dozens of cancellations, blamed on air-traffic control (ATC) delays and bad weather across Europe.

Both easyJet at London Gatwick and British Airways at London Heathrow grounded 32 short-haul flights each.

EasyJet’s cancellations including flights to and from Lanzarote, Budapest and Venice, as well as two round-trips to Belfast International and Edinburgh.

One passenger, Tom McCarthy, wrote on X: “To make us sit on a plane for 3 hours to then cancel the flight and give us zero alternatives is an absolute disgrace! Family holiday cancelled, now no doubt I will have to fight tooth and nail for my money back and compensation!”

It appears compensation will not be paid to passengers. A typical easyJet message to cancelled passengers reads: “We’re sorry that your flight has been cancelled. This is due to air traffic control restrictions.

“The disruption to your flight is outside of our control and is considered to be an extraordinary circumstance.”

Airlines can avoid paying out hundreds of pounds in compensation if they can demonstrate the cause of cancellations or long delays was beyond their control.

At Heathrow, British Airways cancelled two round-trips to Rome as well as services to Naples, Barcelona and Larnaca in Cyprus.

At least 10,000 passengers on easyJet and British Airways are waking up where they did not expect to be.

Under European air passengers’ rights rules, carriers must provide hotels, meals and alternative flights as soon as possible.

”Due to air traffic control restrictions and adverse weather, like other airlines we’ve had to make a small number of alterations to our schedule,” a spokesperson for British Airways said

“We know this will be frustrating for our customers and our teams are working hard to get them onto alternative flights as soon as possible, with the vast majority already booked onto services that will fly later today.”

The Independent has also asked easyJet to comment on the cancellations, which follow hundreds of grounded flights the previous weekend.

At each of the UK’s third- and fourth-largest airports, Manchester and London Stansted, only a single flight was cancelled: an easyJet service to Copenhagen and an A-Jet departure to Ankara respectively.

Hundreds of other flights were delayed across the UK and Europe.

Europe’s biggest budget airline, Ryanair, made no UK cancellations. But the carrier has condemned what it calls “unacceptable” delays due to “repeated air-traffic control staff shortages across Europe”

In a statement on its website it apologies to passengers for “the excessive flight delays caused by European ATC staff shortages today Monday 8 Jul which are affecting all European airlines.

“ATC services, which have had the benefit of no French ATC strike disruption this summer, continue to underperform (despite flight volumes being 5 per cent behind 2019 levels) with repeated ‘staff shortages’.” Ryanair says one in six of its “first wave” departures – 579 early flights – was delayed due to staff shortage.

“These repeated flight delays due to ATC mismanagement are unacceptable,” Ryanair says.