Are you able to enhance your odds of not having your flight cancelled this summer season?

Horror tales of waking up on the day of your long-awaited vacation to discover a “Your flight has been cancelled” message appear omnipresent as we transfer into summer season.

Though airways – together with British Airways, easyJet and Wizz Air – are solely cancelling a small share of their complete deliberate flights every week, there’s an ongoing pattern for each advance and last-minute axing of flights to and from the UK.

The airlines have given a range of reasons for the chaos, from workers shortages and absences to gradual recruitment processes for brand new crew and air site visitors management points at sure airports.

So are you able to keep away from the last-minute nerves and assure your self a very good begin to your vacation?

Here’s what we all know from the cancellation information.

Avoid flying from Gatwick and Bristol

According to information from Cirium, Gatwick had by far essentially the most cancellations of departing flights in each May and June 2022 – 249 complete throughout May, and 248 within the first 14 days of June alone. That’s in comparison with 146 and 62 at Heathrow, and 93 and 85 respectively for Manchester. Gatwick has been working round 800 flights a day this spring (this week asserting a daily cap of 825-850 for July and August), so these departing flight cancellations solely signify round 1 per cent of complete flights being cancelled. (Heathrow is working round 35,100 flights a month, so its 93 departing flights cancelled in May is about 0.3 per cent of complete flights). But with clear operational issues inflicting the cap on flights dealt with, avoiding Gatwick is a savvy transfer.

In June, Bristol Airport noticed 119 flights cancelled within the first two weeks – with round 300 flights dealt with per day, that’s slightly below 3 per cent of companies axed. Going from a smaller airport might assist, whereas Stansted has remained essentially the most resilient London airport: the airports with the fewest cancellations throughout May had been London Stansted, Jersey and Teeside (simply six every), whereas within the first two weeks of June the Isle of Man, Inverness and Humberside every noticed six or seven cancellations, with Stansted performing worse however nonetheless nicely with simply 14.

Avoid easyJet and BA short-haul

The worst performing airline for cancellations up to now six weeks, by an extended stretch, has been easyJet – in accordance with Cirium, it cancelled 932 departing flights from the UK between 1 May and 14 June 2022. For comparability, British Airways (together with its MetropolisFlyer subsidiary) cancelled the subsequent largest quantity: 195 in these six weeks. Most of the BA routes affected had been home or short-haul European routes (see beneath). Domestic UK airline Loganair had the third highest variety of cancellations for departing flights on this six-week interval, with 147 companies scrapped. Other airways within the high 10 for cancellations May-June embody SAS, Tui, Lufthansa and Eastern Airways.

Fly Ryanair or Jet2

On the opposite hand, regardless of working an enormous community, Ryanair didn’t seem within the high 10 for airways with essentially the most flight cancellations in both month. Bloomberg journalist Conrad Quilty-Harper championed the blue finances provider on Twitter this week, reasoning: “EasyJet and British Airways have been experiencing the most problems with May’s IT issues leading to many cancelled flights. Ryanair’s schedule has been relatively resilient!”

It’s true that Ryanair appears largely unaffected by the present spate of flight cancellations – some within the trade have instructed it is because it made minimal redundancies within the pandemic, agreeing pay cuts and work apply adjustments with pilots as an alternative. Thus it hasn’t needed to “scale up” with new – and probably reluctant – recruits in the identical means that BA and easyJet have. Jet2 equally didn’t seem within the high 10 for flight cancellations, whereas its rivals easyJet, Wizz Air and Tui all did.

Fly on Tuesdays and keep away from Mondays

More sage recommendation from Mr Quilty-Harper, who says: “Fly on a Tuesday, not Sunday, although the gains are marginal.” His evaluation of flight cancellations over the 30 days from 9 May and seven June discovered the biggest hole between the variety of scheduled flights and people which really departed was on Sundays, a distinction of 6.6 per cent. Tuesday was the perfect day for many scheduled flights taking off, although there was nonetheless a 5.5 per cent distinction. There’s additionally some pricing logic behind this tip: Tuesday is one of the cheapest days to fly.

Fly long-haul

This is one scenario by which a 14-hour flight would possibly really be much less tense than a 40-minute one. According to evaluation by The Independent and information from Cirium, quite a lot of repeat routes have been cancelled by British Airways and easyJet up to now six weeks, together with Belfast, the Isle of Man, Scotland Italy, Spain and the Canary Islands, Portugal and Turkey. No long-haul flights have been affected by the repeat cancellations attributable to workers shortages, so should you’re flying, say, BA to New York from Heathrow, your odds are significantly better. One mid-haul exception is Hurghada in Egypt, which easyJet has cancelled all flights to from now till the top of July.

Avoid the Netherlands

Both KLM and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport have been having a troublesome time over the past two months, with KLM cancelling dozens of flights from the hub because of operational points. According to Cirium information, KLM’s CityHopper model cancelled the third most flights in May 2022 and the fourth most within the first two weeks of June. Yesterday, Schiphol Airport restricted the variety of passengers it’s going to deal with this summer season to 70,000 a day – round 16 per cent fewer than airways had deliberate to serve throughout this era. A scarcity of safety staff and baggage handlers on the airport has seen knock-on results that are inflicting each day disruption.