The figure is 10 times worse than Stansted, the UK’s best-performing hub. More than 3% of scheduled flights from Gatwick did not take place, compared to 0.3% of those from Stansted, according to figures from air travel information company OAG exclusively provided to Sky News. June was Gatwick’s worst month this year – one in 14 flights from the airport was cancelled. The data is provided to the OAG by airlines, government agencies and other sources, and a cancellation is defined as any flight that an airline has posted to operate that has not been canceled at least 48 hours before departure. A spokesman for Gatwick Airport said it was sorry for any cancellations and disruption to passengers – and explained that it would carefully increase capacity over the coming months “so that airlines fly more reliable schedules and passengers have a better level of service”. He said this will help both airlines and ground handling companies, employed by airlines, to reduce the number of flights they have to manage. Which airlines have canceled the most flights? Ryanair has been the world’s best-performing major airline – it has canceled just 0.3% of flights so far this year. British Airways is the UK’s worst performing airline. At 3.5%, you are more than 12 times more likely to have a BA flight canceled than a Ryanair flight if you were expecting to fly in the first six months of 2022. That data covers flights up to July 10 and does not include the additional 10,300 cancellations the airline announced, affecting flights due to take off before the end of October. Globally, Shanghai-based China Eastern has been hit by far the hardest, a product of the city’s strict lockdown since March. A BA spokesman attributed some of the problems to major storms in February, when one in seven of its flights were canceled in a one-week period at the peak of the year. It also suffered an IT glitch at the end of March, which coincided with a tenth of flights being canceled at short notice. The airline also highlighted increased exposure to global factors such as Russia’s war in Ukraine and ongoing COVID restrictions in Asia, compared to companies such as easyJet and Ryanair that only fly within Europe. The figures show that during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, easyJet was the worst-hit airline worldwide. It canceled more than 50% of its 200,000 scheduled flights that year and more than 99% of all flights due to take off in April 2020. The OAG says airlines may be preventing consumers from booking many of these flights during the first frantic period of the pandemic, even though they weren’t officially canceled until less than 48 hours before the scheduled departure time. Those flights are included in the data set, but the disruption is unlikely to have affected as many people as more recent cancellations. Why are non-restricted flights still canceled for COVID? The low overall rates mean that your flight is still unlikely to be canceled if you were to travel this year, although it has been worse at different points, peaking in February when more than 1 in 20 flights from the UK were cancelled. One of the main reasons for the continued disruption is staffing. Kully Sandhu, chief executive of Aviation Recruitment Network Ltd, said the number of vacancies it is trying to fill for positions such as baggage handlers, cabin crew and cleaners has doubled since 2019, while the number of applicants has halved. Gatwick Airport told us that its management plans for the coming months have been put in place because “an airport review has found that some companies based at Gatwick are operating with severe shortages of staff resources over the summer holiday period”. One of the things that puts people off is related to the security requirements to work at airports. Applicants must provide a detailed five-year employment history, which is especially rare for entry-level positions. Mr Sandhu said job postings at some airports were also more popular than others, depending on the demographics of the area. John Grant, chief analyst at OAG, said: “When we got into COVID, airlines were laying off a lot of people. During this two-year leave period, these people found work elsewhere and did not return to the industry. “Of those who have returned, their security policies will have expired. They have to be checked again and go through the same process as two years ago. “We didn’t come out of lockdowns until the end of March in terms of the air transport industry in Europe, so there’s a huge number of people who have to go through the process.” In the current strong job market, it’s simply easier and faster to find another job – often with better hours – elsewhere, Mr Sandhu explained. He also said that Brexit meant that workers from Europe, particularly those who came to provide temporary work only at the busiest times, were no longer submitting the same numbers of applications. How does it compare to before the pandemic? The latest figures mean a flight in 2022 is 2.5 times more likely to be canceled than a flight in the same period in 2019, but there have been huge improvements compared to the peak of the pandemic. In April and May 2020, more than three quarters of flights from the UK were canceled and the number of scheduled flights has yet to recover to ‘normal’ levels. How does the UK compare to other countries? The UK has underperformed other major European countries which have scheduled more than 200,000 flights this year so far. But the US, Canada, Indonesia and Turkey perform even worse. Mr Grant said the US and Canada had lifted travel requirements for COVID only in recent weeks and pointed out that Indonesia was a very closed market as Asian countries implemented their own travel rules, “creating almost total lockdowns ». The harsh lockdown means that of the world’s biggest airports, the 20 worst-performing are all from China. More than four out of five flights from Shanghai’s two airports were canceled between April and May, the same rate as those canceled in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. How can you avoid being affected? Mr Grant recommends booking away from peak times and busiest airports. He said: “One of the interesting patterns is that if you choose to depart between 10am and 2pm. “Definitely don’t try to catch the first flight to your destination because that’s when every airline in Europe sends hundreds of aircraft into the sky between 6am and 8 a.m. in the morning. “Another thing to consider is flying out of an airport that’s smaller where there are fewer flights and fewer airlines operating, so there’s more room to deal with those delays.” The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to delivering transparent journalism from Sky News. We collect, analyze and visualize data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite imagery, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while showing how our journalism is done. Why data journalism matters to Sky News
