July 4th - EasyJet operations chief quits amid flight chaos
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2022
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The chief operating officer of Britain’s biggest budget airline has resigned just as the peak summer season gets under way.
Peter Bellew apparently left easyJet on Friday 1 July “to pursue other business opportunities”. For a top operational executive to leave the airline just as the busiest months of the year are beginning shows the scale of the crisis at easyJet.
Since international air travel restarted at scale in March this year, easyJet has struggled to operate the schedule it promised. Thousands of flights have been grounded, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Cullder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast with the latest news on |
| 0:07.8 | travelling, whether you're dreaming of a great escape, or possibly dreading the possibility of what |
| 0:14.5 | might happen when you get away, if you can get away. Well, I am here to try to reassure you that despite appearances, |
| 0:24.1 | it will probably be all right. I cannot, unfortunately, dismiss the news which came in this afternoon. |
| 0:34.2 | Really shock. A surprise. And this is the loss of, or the departure of Peter Bellew |
| 0:41.9 | from EasyJet. He was the chief operating officer. Let me tell you about Peter. I'm very fond of him. |
| 0:48.8 | He's a very good company. He's always been very kind to me in his various aviation roles, |
| 0:57.5 | which are quite considerable. |
| 1:05.8 | He worked for years at Ryanair, and then he was asked to go and run Malaysia Airlines after the tragic loss of, in quick succession, MH370, which still disappeared, and of course then MH17, |
| 1:15.7 | which was shot down over Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. He went in and effectively started |
| 1:23.4 | to turn things around and Malaysia Airlines now are doing all right I believe he was then brought |
| 1:29.9 | back five years ago by Ryanair to sort out the pilots there been an almighty mess up you |
| 1:37.8 | might remember it now even though it feels a bit like ancient history in which they'd got their pilots' rosters all messed up |
| 1:46.7 | and they simply didn't have enough pilots to fly the planes. |
| 1:50.7 | Well, here we are, five years on. |
| 1:53.1 | Peter went to EasyJet and there was in fact a big legal tussle about whether he was allowed |
| 2:00.5 | to. Ended up in the Irish High Court as far as I can recall. Um, fact, a big legal tussle about whether he was allowed to, |
| 2:01.4 | ended up in the Irish High Court as far as I can recall. |
| 2:04.9 | He did go there. |
| 2:06.7 | He hasn't been a great success as far as a lot of people in the airline are concerned. |
| 2:13.9 | And there is, certainly from a few contacts I have, some sense of, well, it was good that he's gone and now let's get on with stuff. |
| 2:25.9 | But look, I'm troubled partly because I know and like Peter, but also because for this to happen, as the peak season is beginning is just a very, |
... |
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