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Airport chaos in Europe: Airlines cancel 15,000 flights in August

Airlines have cancelled a further 15,000 flights in Europe this August as they continue to struggle with staff shortages and strikes, new data shows.

Published: 12 July 2022 15:02 CEST
Airport chaos in Europe: Airlines cancel 15,000 flights in August
Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP

The latest data from the global flight airline analysis firm Citrium shows that airlines have cancelled 25,378 flights from their August schedules, of which 15,788 are in Europe.

Airlines across Europe have been struggling with staff shortages, with passengers reporting chaotic scenes and long queues at airports.

Many other airlines and airports have been hit by strikes from staff demanding higher wages to help them deal with the cost of living, compounding the misery for airline passengers.

According to Cirium, Turkish Airlines is the company responsible for the largest number of cancellations in Europe with 4,408 cancelled flights, then comes British Airways with 3,600 cancellations, easyJet with 2,045, Lufthansa with 1,888 and Wizz Air with 1,256.

The 15,000 cancelled flights, however, represent just two percent of the August 2022 flight schedule for Europe.

If you are flying from an EU country, or with an EU-based airline, you must be offered a choice of either a refund or an exchange if your flight is cancelled.

READ ALSO Airport chaos in Europe: What are your rights if your flight is cancelled or delayed?

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TRAVEL NEWS

Why a Swiss-EU deal could be bad news for train users in Switzerland

Switzerland’s rail system is connected with that of neighbouring countries, but that may prove to be a problem in the future depending on the outcome of talks between Switzerland and the EU.

Published: 25 April 2024 18:01 CEST
Why a Swiss-EU deal could be bad news for train users in Switzerland

Bern and Brussels are negotiating various bilateral treaties during the current round of bilateral talks. 

One of the topics under discussion is the inter-connected rail network — which sounds like an overall positive development for seamless cross-border travel.

However, Vincent Ducrot, head of national rail company SBB fears that such a deal would be detrimental to Swiss commuters, because it would mean international trains would have priority over Switzerland’s system.

What is it about?

Currently, priority is given to national traffic on Swiss territory.

But a new deal with the EU would mean that European law — and international train traffic — would take precedence.

The problem is that all the train paths in Switzerland are currently occupied, Ducrot said in an interview with Swiss media on Wednesday.

He cited the example of the Geneva-Paris route, on which several European companies would like to bid. But that would mean that SBB would lose out by having to remove an existing train to accommodate a new foreign one.

And there is more: the question of punctuality

The SBB has long had a problem with trains from Germany, as half of them arrive in Switzerland late, disrupting the carefully coordinated Swiss railway timetable.  

“Another huge concern we have is that the level of punctuality of the international system is totally different from ours,” Ducrot said. “Delays therefore risk being imported into Switzerland.”

To ease the chaos, the SBB has to keep special trains on standby to replace delayed ICE trains on the Basel-Zurich route, and passengers travelling from Germany to Zurich often have to transfer onto Swiss trains in Basel.

“Today, if a German train arrives late in Basel, we stop it and send a [Swiss] reserve train instead,” Ducret said.

“But if we can no longer do this in the future, it would mean that the train in question is accumulating delays, but above all that it is putting the SBB system behind schedule.”

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