London Gatwick: Why has easyJet cancelled 1,700 flights from July to September to and from Gatwick? Read easyJet's statement in full

The news comes as a huge blow as people prepare to travel on their summer holidays. The airline has blamed constrained airspace over Europe and ongoing air traffic control difficulties, which are causing regular cancellations and they airline said they had made ‘some pre-emptive adjustments to our programme consolidating a small number of flights at Gatwick’. This is around 1,700 flights in total out of a total of 90,000 in this period so it amounts to less than a day's worth of flying.

easyJet also said 95% of affected passengers had been rebooked onto alternative flights.

July is scheduled to record the highest number of UK flight departures since October 2019 before the Covid pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

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An easyJet spokesperson said: “We are currently operating up to around 1,800 flights and carrying around 250,000 customers per day with more crew and pilots flying than ever before and like all airlines, we review our flights on an ongoing basis.

"As Eurocontrol has stated, the whole industry is seeing challenging conditions this summer with more constrained air space due to the war in Ukraine resulting in unprecedented ATC delays, as well as further potential ATC strike action.

"We have therefore made some pre-emptive adjustments to our programme consolidating a small number of flights at Gatwick, where we have multiple daily frequencies, in order to help mitigate these external challenges on the day of travel for our customers and we continue to operate around over 90,000 flights over this period.

“Customers whose flights are affected are being informed, with 95% customers being rebooked onto an alternative flight and all customers provided with the option to rebook or receive a refund. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused.”