Around 23,000 passengers face disruption amid Aer Lingus flight cancellations

About 23,000 passengers travelling on 430 flights this summer could be disrupted by Aer Lingus cancellations blamed on maintenance delays, it has emerged.

The Irish airline said at the weekend it could cancel up to 2 per cent of its flights this summer because of “mandatory maintenance”, according to The Irish Times.

Aer Lingus flies more than 12 million people a year, with the majority travelling during the summer season from April to October.

Delays in maintenance to air frames, the body of the aircraft, will affect around 120 flights, with a further 30 resulting from other required checks, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Cutting the number of flights on some routes, based on bookings, could result in a further 280 changes, that will hit about 15,000 customers, The Irish Times reported.

Airlines “consolidate” flights in this way, where bookings show that passengers can be accommodated on fewer services than the number originally scheduled.

The maintenance delays result from work carried out on items identified during checks and holdups arise from supply bottlenecks in the maintenance industry itself.

Airlines take assumed times for the completion of the regular maintenance on aircraft into account when planning schedules.

Aer Lingus stressed it was putting the “vast majority” of affected passengers on alternative flights to their destinations on the same day. Cancellations and other schedule changes on this scale are not unusual, industry sources say.

The carrier’s announcement is not related to fears for jet fuel supplies sparked by ongoing chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, closed by the US-Israeli conflict with Iran.

However, industry figures concede this has made passengers more aware of cancellations or risks of disruption to holiday plans.