LONDON – In the last few minutes, easyJet has announced that their Chief Operating Officer, Peter Bellew, has resigned following travel chaos at the airline.
easyJet CEO Johan Lundgren thanked Bellew for his service at the airline:
“I would like to thank Peter for his hard work and wish him well. Everyone at easyJet remains absolutely focused on delivering a safe and reliable operation this summer”.
Bellew has been in the role at easyJet for around two years, having famously worked for Ryanair as a COO from December 2017 to January 2020.
He hasn’t posted any form of statement at present regarding his own departure, but with easyJet becoming the most affected airline by this chaos, it is no wonder that a scalp has been made available.
Last month, easyJet had a week of hell as the airline continues to reduce its Summer 2022 program.
According to a report from the BBC, the airline was wanting to operate around 97% of its pre-COVID network between next month and September, but this has now been scaled back to 90%.
Such a revelation comes following the decision from the airline to limit the number of flights it operates out of London Gatwick and Amsterdam Schiphol Airport respectively.
It is understood that cancellations will extend to other airports where it operates services from.
Direct Figure Unknown…
easyJet couldn’t dictate the exact figure of flights that would be canceled over this period, but the airline said this was part of its exercise of building resilience on its network.
The airline has been plagued by staff shortages in ground handling and at airports as well as significant delays in the air traffic control network as well.
If the airline doesn’t know the direct figure as of yet, it remains clear that it is going to be a large number of flights that will be affected.
Other airlines like TUI have been suffering the same level of cancellations and have been continuing to cause havoc in the sector.
Overall…
It remains clear that easyJet has had quite a few weeks, and such chaos looks to last a lot longer, which is going to damage a good opportunity for the carrier to thrive well in the Summer 2022 season.
Recruitment is going to be a big driving factor for airlines like easyJet, as the expectation is to get to full capacity at some point. When that will be is yet another unknown.
All eyes are going to be on the rest of the sector to see what more can be done in order to alleviate the issues that are ultimately being sent down to the consumer.
It is going to be interesting to see who replaces Bellew, and what moves they will take to get the airport back to its normal glory.
This is a developing story.
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