Portugal summer holiday nightmare as hundreds of EasyJet flights cancelled at the last minute

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled to one of Europe’s most popular destinations, causing chaos for many on their summer holidays.

EasyJet has cancelled 232 of the 1,138 flights to and from Portugal it had been scheduled to operate during a three-day strike by its cabin crew in the country starting Thursday, the company said.

The budget airline’s cabin staff in the Western European country announced late last month a strike from August 15 to August 17.

It comes as official stats show the number of foreign tourists visiting Portugal rose 7.5% between January and June, making it the best first half ever and paving the way for another record year.

In the first half of 2023, visitors from Britain represented the largest share of total arrivals, closely followed by the United States, which has been growing as a source of tourism to the country, with more than a million guests each. Neighbouring Spaniards accounted for the third-largest share of arrivals.

Reasons for the action include a lack of roster stability, insufficient staffing and pressure to work overtime for commercial purposes, according to the civil aviation flight personnel union SNPVAC.

EasyJet Portugal told Reuters on Wednesday it had scheduled 1,138 flights for those dates, but had to cancel about a fifth of them due to the strike.

“We regret that, due to the unnecessary strike action planned by the SNPVAC union and in order to minimise the impact of the disruption on the day of travel for our customers, we have had to cancel some of the flights planned to operate during the period of the collective action,” the company said.

The Portuguese government has decreed the need for minimum services during the strike, which should include flights to the island of Madeira, Geneva, Luxembourg and London.

EasyJet has 19 aircraft based in Portugal, as well as more than 800 employees there.

The National Statistics Institute (INE) said more than 8.8 million foreigners stayed in Portuguese hotels between January and June this year, adding that in June alone, nearly 2 million guests entered the country, which was also a record, up 6.9% from a year earlier.

Tourism has been a key driver of Portugal’s economy and last year foreign tourism to Portugal reached a record of more than 18 million guests.

All tourism-linked consumption, at 43.7 billion euros ($48.2 billion), accounted for 16.5% of last year’s gross domestic product, generating about half of the 2.3% economic growth, INE data showed earlier this month.

Using that metric, Portugal’s reliance on tourism has been one of the highest in the continental European Union and second after Iceland, INE data showed.

The INE said the hotel sector registered more than 14 million guests, including local travellers, while total hotel revenues increased 12.3% year-on-year to 2.8 billion euros.

In a separate report, INE said the number of passengers who travelled through Portuguese airports in June rose 5.6% to 6.7 million compared with the previous year.