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Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, on Wednesday the 14th of June.

A week away from midsummer, incidentally, when the nights start drawing in, at least in the northern hemisphere.

Well, if I had taken the offer of EasyJet, I would be still cooling my heels at Gatwick Airport, waiting for a flight to Milan.

Thursday was the first day that they had any available after they cancelled my flight on Monday.

And I've been thinking about the hundreds of cancellations that we have seen

over the past a few days really started Sunday afternoon with some quite vicious weather in

the Gatwick area and that then spread to Heathrow and so we saw the traditional pattern which is that

there are a vast number of cancellations on EasyJet after Gatwick and on British Airways out of

Heathrow well over 150 from each. And that represents getting on for 50,000 passengers

who've been told their planes aren't going. Now, I don't for one moment have any problem with the

fact that both airlines, of course, are absolutely safety first

and they both have amazing safety records.

But the fact remains that both of them are far more exposed than any other airlines at Gatwick

Freezer Jet and Heathrow for British Airways and that's simply a reflection of their size and

scale and if you take air lingers which flies to both Heathrow and Gatwick,

if something goes wrong at either Heathrow or Gatwick,

...