If you fly short-haul out of London, the route map just shrank. Schedule data crunched by OAG shows easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air have quietly dropped 25 routes from the capital during 2026, with none scheduled to return in 2027. Given that the three budget carriers account for 47% of all London departures — over 200,000 flights in 2026, or roughly 549 a day — these cancellations matter.
Wizz Air is responsible for more than half the cuts, with 14 routes gone. The airline has walked away from Saudi Arabia entirely, ending its daily A321XLR flights from Gatwick to both Jeddah and Medina, and it has also pulled out of Vienna altogether. Greek island favourites Corfu, Mykonos and Zakynthos have lost their Luton links, while Santorini's Gatwick service lasted just one summer. Marrakech, Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Faro and Istanbul have all been dropped from Gatwick or Luton too — a notable retreat, especially from Gatwick, which has fallen from Wizz's top ten airports to 31st place and will sink further in 2027.
Ryanair has cut six routes, five of them from its Stansted stronghold. Turkey has lost its Ryanair service entirely, with Bodrum and Dalaman both ending in October after only launching in 2024. Rodez in southern France is gone after two decades, and Salerno — the gateway near the Amalfi Coast that only reopened to commercial flights in 2024 — has lost all its international links. Luton's route to Treviso has also ended, though the airline shifted it to Venice Marco Polo.
easyJet's five cuts are smaller but still felt: Luton to Athens (revived only in 2024) ended in March, along with Southend's Grenoble ski route. Gatwick's short hop to Newquay launched in June 2026 and was dead by August, leaving that Cornwall route with no service at all after a series of operator changes. Luton's flights to Almeria and Izmir wrapped up in October.
So what does this mean in practice? If you had your heart set on a direct flight to Bodrum, Jeddah, Vienna or the Greek islands from London, you'll now need to look at other carriers, connecting itineraries, or nearby airports — Naples for Salerno, Toulouse for Rodez, Venice for Treviso. For Wizz loyalists, Luton remains the airline's biggest base for now, though Rome Fiumicino is set to overtake it next summer, which hints at where its growth is heading.
It's not all grim. With 25 routes gone from a network of hundreds, most London short-haul options are untouched, and competition on popular routes remains fierce. But if you book with one of these three airlines, it's worth double-checking that your route still exists before locking in plans for 2027 — and keeping an eye out when a favourite route only launched recently. Recent history here suggests brand-new summer routes can disappear as fast as they appeared.
