It's the 'top ten' list no airline wants to be on. But new data relating to European airline scheduling over the last few weeks clearly show which airlines are losing the battle against operational challenges when it comes to flights in one of summer's most popular destinations.
Travel intelligence provider Mabrian has analyzed data comparing how many flights were scheduled on 14 June to operate between 1 and 15 July, compared to scheduled flights for the same period as of 28 June. The data analyzed does not include flights cancelled at the last minute.
The results are nothing short of alarming.
"Just looking at the top ten by cancellations based on this data we can see over 2,000 flights cancelled across Europe just for the 1 to 15 July period," noted Carlos Cendra, an executive at Mabrian.
"It is highly unusual to see airlines cancelling scheduled flights at such short notice, literally weeks before take off, right at the peak of the summer season. We've never seen anything like this and it is a reflection of the labour difficulties that airlines and airports are having right now, making them unable to return to 2019 capacity levels."
The winner (er... 'loser'?) by a mile is Britain's easyJet, with nearly 1400 cancelled flights in that two-week period. The runner up, Turkish Airlines, has 'only' 400. One North American airline makes the list, too. United has cancelled 30 flights in the first two weeks of JUL.
“In fact we must keep some perspective on this overall situation, as when we look at the overall numbers in terms of percentage of the air capacity of an airline, what we notice is that in many cases the cancellations in relative terms are very low – the lowest rate of the top 10 being Air Europa with under 0.5% of flights cancelled, which means that 199 out of 200 are still scheduled to fly," says Cendra.
“Whilst easyJet 's overall number of flights cancelled is 1,394, as a percentage of their air capacity it is fair to point out that this is just 5.5% (or one in 20 flights) and that, perhaps surprisingly, it is Turkish Airlines that has the highest ratio of cancelled flights, at nearly 7%.
“Still every cancellation represents a holiday nightmare for someone and a loss in revenue for the airline: no one is winning here and clearly as an industry we're a long way from solving the problem."
