The British budget airline, EasyJet, said that air traffic control in Europe led it to cancel 1,700 flights, most of which were meant to leave from London's Gatwick airport and travel to European airports, the budget airline announced.
"The whole sector is experiencing difficult conditions this summer with airspace more constrained due to the war in Ukraine (...) and potential further strikes", EasyJet said in a statement sent to AFP.
READ MORE: LATEST: The transport strikes that will hit passengers in Europe this summer
The company also apologised for any "inconvenience that this may have caused".
The flights were expected to take place in July, August and September 2023.
The airline said on Monday that that the cancellations would affect 180,000 customers, but that 95 percent of those passengers had already been rebooked on another flight. According to MSN, the remaining passengers were offered a refund.
EasyJet said in their statement that the cancellations are pre-emptive, which would help to avoid possible last-minute cancellations later in the summer.
The British airline clarified that it did have sufficient crew and pilots - an issue that several airlines faced in the summer of 2022 post-Covid.
Eurocontrol, which manages European airspace, has also warned that air traffic control could be a problem during the summer of 2023.
Easyjet did not explicitly mention French air traffic controllers - which caused significant frustration for airlines, namely Ryanair during the spring amid pension protests.
READ MORE: Cancellations and compensation: How French strikes affect European flights
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