Can you improve your odds of not having your flight cancelled this summer?

Horror stories of waking up on the day of your long-awaited holiday to find a “Your flight has been cancelled” message seem omnipresent as we move into summer.

Though airlines – including British Airways, easyJet and Wizz Air – are only cancelling a small percentage of their total planned flights each week, there is an ongoing trend for both advance and last-minute axing of flights to and from the UK.

The airlines have given a range of reasons for the chaos, from staff shortages and absences to slow recruitment processes for new crew and air traffic control issues at certain airports.

EasyJet recently announced it would be culling hundreds more flights this summer; it will be operating 90 rather than the previously anticipated 97 per cent of its summer schedule.

Meanwhile, Gatwick is capping daily operations to ensure a smoother running of the airport, meaning airlines will have to cancel up to 50 flights a day.

So can you avoid the last-minute nerves and guarantee yourself a good start to your holiday?

Here’s what we know from the cancellation data.

Avoid flying from Gatwick and Bristol

According to data from Cirium, Gatwick had by far the most cancellations of departing flights in both May and June 2022 – 249 total during May, and 248 in the first 14 days of June alone. That’s compared to 146 and 62 at Heathrow, and 93 and 85 respectively for Manchester. Gatwick has been operating around 800 flights a day this spring (recently announcing a daily cap of 825-850 for July and August), so these departing flight cancellations only represent around 1 per cent of total flights being cancelled. (Heathrow is operating around 35,100 flights a month, so its 93 departing flights cancelled in May is about 0.3 per cent of total flights). But with clear operational problems causing the cap on flights handled, avoiding Gatwick is a savvy move.

In June, Bristol Airport saw 119 flights cancelled in the first two weeks – with around 300 flights handled per day, that’s just under 3 per cent of services axed. Going from a smaller airport could help, while Stansted has remained the most resilient London airport: the airports with the fewest cancellations during May were London Stansted, Jersey and Teeside (just six each), while in the first two weeks of June the Isle of Man, Inverness and Humberside each saw six or seven cancellations, with Stansted performing worse but still well with just 14.

Avoid easyJet and BA short-haul

The worst performing airline for cancellations…