Airlines all over the world have cancelled more than 25,000 flights from their flight schedules for August, with around 60% of them in Europe. Such a high number of cancellations follows the staff shortages and other issues that airports in Europe and further in the world have been dealing with.

The most recent data provided by Cirium shows that currently, Europe is the most affected area. Up until now, a total of 15,788 flights that were scheduled to fly in August have been cancelled in Europe.

However, even though this is a high number of flight cancellations, it represents only two per cent of the entire flight schedule for Europe in August.

According to Cirium, the largest number of flights for August have been cancelled by Turkish Airlines. The latter cancelled 4,408 take-offs last week alone.

Turkish Airlines is followed by British Airways with 3,600 cancelled flights, EasyJet with 2,045 cancelled flights, Lufthansa with 1,888 cancelled flights, and Wizz Air with 1,256 cancelled flights.

Lufthansa just recently announced that it would cancel 2,000 flights scheduled to fly from Frankfurt and Munich this summer. The airline said that such a decision had been taken after considering the staff shortages at the airports as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In terms of flight cancellations by countries, the travel intelligence platform, Mabrian, revealed earlier this week that Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Austria, Portugal, and Denmark, have cancelled the highest number of flights scheduled to fly between July 1 and 15.

While there is still no available data regarding August, it is expected that the number of flights cancelled in August will be even higher than the number of those cancelled during the above-mentioned period.

Taking into account the current air travel situation, the Commission of the European Union has made sure to remind all passengers of their rights.

The Commission highlighted that all passengers travelling in the EU have rights that must be complied with. In addition, it advised everyone going on a holiday to download the ‘Your Passenger Rights” app.

According to Your Europe, an official website of the EU, all passengers have the right to choose between re-routing, reimbursement, or return if their flight is cancelled. Moreover, passengers whose flights get cancelled are also entitled to assistance at the airport.

Furthermore, passengers informed of the cancellation less than two weeks before the scheduled departure have the right to compensation.

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Source: www.schengenvisainfo.com