Travel with Katie Butler: EasyJet cancel 1700 summer flights

Katie Butler writes: The Jet2holidays trade team ran the events in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Newcastle, covering areas predominantly around their UK bases.

Travel agent relationships director Alan Cross said: “These events promise to be a fantastic night out and offer attendees the chance to spend some invaluable time with our award winning trade team, whilst making some fantastic memories.”

The evening certainly did not disappoint and we were able to speak with staff from finance, marketing, trade, and indeed Alan himself.

These evenings are a great opportunity for us as independent agents to discuss our relationship with the operator and put forward our feedback.

As always we were looked after incredibly well and managed to enjoy a few lovely cocktails.

Whilst on the topic; Jet2 last week reported full-year profit and it is looking good for the Yorkshire based company.

I am often talking about how unbelievably busy we are and most travel companies are reporting pre-pandemic growth.

Jet2 plc has reported a significantly improved annual financial result, exceeding its pre-pandemic performance.

The report states group operating profit for the year ending March 31, 2023 is at a staggering £394 million, compared to a loss in 2022.

Chairman Philip Meeson said: “Despite the group facing various cost pressures such as fuel, carbon taxes, wage increases and investment, pricing to date for both our package holiday and flight only product has been robust.”

You may have seen in the mainstream news that easyJet have axed some 1,700 flights in a major blow to the summer season.

EasyJet holidays are another company we work closely with and thankfully we have not been impacted with these cancellations which are mainly from Gatwick Airport.

EasyJet have blamed air traffic control issues, European airspace shrinking owing to the war in Ukraine, as well as threats of further industrial action.

So far so good for the 2023 season, our weekly feedback calls with our own customers have mainly been positive and certainly our main departure airports – Leeds Bradford and Manchester, appear to have security and check-in queues under control.

We are aware of a number of slight flight delays due to Air Traffic Control strikes over France impacting airline routing, but nevertheless feedback has been good.

We do still have the main school holiday dates to contend with and I hope the feedback remains consistent throughout this period.

At the time of writing this it is 6am and I am in store attempting to get up to date as I venture on my own family holiday next week. So, my next few updates will be from a hopefully sunny Tenerife.

Late deal holidays accounted for 38 per cent of our bookings last week. Majorca and Turkey continue to retain top spot.