Lesley Offley was due to fly to Austria with her family to celebrate her husband’s 60th birthday on Tuesday.

But the 62-year-old from Surrey was told on Monday morning their Gatwick flight had been cancelled.
“We’ve spent all morning unravelling all our travel plans for my husband’s 60th birthday – first time we’ve attempted to travel since 2019 – and [I’m] completely fed up,” she told the BBC.
“It’s been phone calls and emails all day, accommodation is lot more money so we’ve lost out there and we’re still trying sort out the travel insurance.
“We’ve re-booked for next week but I don’t feel confident at all.”
On top of this, Ms Offley said they have been refused a refund on their parking booking because they cancelled less than 24 hours before they were due to park.

EasyJet said staff absences were double their normal levels due to Covid.
It said it had decided to cancel more flights in advance “in order to give customers notice”.
“We are contacting customers directly and providing them with their options,” it said.
“We expect to make similar levels of pre-emptive cancellations over the coming days, due to the ongoing high level of sickness.”

John Strickland, director of transport consultancy JLS Consulting, said the situation for airlines was going to be “very difficult” over the next couple of months.
“I think certainly the next month or two are going to be very difficult,” he told the BBC’s Wake Up To Money.
“We know that Manchester has said that passengers should expect queues for one to two hours for the next several weeks while they undertake additional training.”

According to the data firm Cirium, a total of 1,143 flights were cancelled to and from the UK in the week up to 3 April, with 382 of them grounded over the weekend.
Cirium said British Airways cancelled 662 flights to and from the UK last week, while EasyJet cancelled 357.
British Airways took the decision two weeks ago to remove some flights, mostly short-haul routes, from its schedules until May.
Aside from flight disruption, travellers hoping for an Easter getaway have also been affected by delays to the Eurotunnel and to ferry services.

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