EasyJet was forced to cancel more than 200 flights over the weekend due to the high number of staff being off sick with Covid-19.
The disruption to easyJet’s services has continued into this week with more than 60 flights to and from the UK also cancelled on Monday (4 April).
An easyJet spokesperson said: “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.
“We have taken action to mitigate this through the rostering of additional standby crew, however, with the current levels of sickness we have also decided to make some cancellations in advance which were focused on consolidating flights where we have multiple frequencies so customers have more options to rebook their travel, often on the same day.”
EasyJet added that the 60 services cancelled on Monday were a “small proportion” of its daily schedule of more than 1,645 flights.
Meanwhile British Airways has already moved to trim its schedule over the next two months in anticipation of potential Covid-related staff shortages.
“Aviation has been one of the industries worst hit by the pandemic and airlines and airports are experiencing the same issues rebuilding their operations while managing the continuing impact of Covid,” said a BA spokesperson.
“We are also building a completely new subsidiary at Gatwick while increasing the size of our schedule at Heathrow.
“While the vast majority of our flights continue to operate as planned, as a precaution we've slightly reduced our schedule between now and the end of May as we ramp back up.”