“I would like to apologise to customers for the disruption that has affected the easyJet network over the last few weeks. In July we cancelled 28 flights affecting some 3,500 people. While this represents only a tiny proportion of the 7,500 flights we operated, and the 1.08 million passengers we carried in July, it is still too many.”

“Needless to say, there has been a certain amount of mis-reporting of the situation, so I thought it necessary to set the record straight and let our customers know exactly what is going on - straight from the horse`s mouth!”

“Many factors have affected our schedule this summer including severe air traffic control problems (strikes, technical breakdowns, go-slows) across Europe, some building works at Luton Airport and unprecedented thunder storms around Europe.”

“However, we are the first to acknowledge that the knock-on from these external factors has not been handled well on occasions - particularly due to problems associated with a new system for rostering crews which has reduced the resilience of our flying programme to such external factors.”

“However, one fundamental issue has not been affected. Safety always comes first and we will never do anything to prejudice it. The recent problems are related to punctuality, not safety. In fact, cancelled flights are evidence, in many cases, that we do not compromise safety.”

“This is widely understood by everybody within the industry, although some people have chosen to erroneously report statements made by the British Airline Pilots Associations (BALPA). BALPA have made it perfectly clear that they have no concerns relating to safety at easyJet and it is not a subject for discussion in forthcoming talks.”
“The airline is taking a number of steps to rectify the problem. As a result of the completion of the merger with Go last week, we now have a stronger management team with shared resources, and are proposing a number of changes to improve the operational performance. These include establishing a full-time team to focus on the problem, improvments to the crew rostering system, obtaining short-term capacity for the fleet, and combining passengers on a very small number of flights to free-up aircraft capacity.”
“We are determined that this important, but temporary, hiccup does not deflect us from our path of providing safe, on-time, low-cost air travel to millions of travellers.”

“Thank you for your patience.” Ray Webster / easyJet Chief Executive

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