easyJet A320s departed incorrect runway positions at Luton and Manchester, AAIB finds

Quick summary

The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch has published findings on two separate easyJet Airbus A320 departures from incorrect runway positions during summer 2025 — one at London Luton Airport (LTN) on 13 June 2025 and a second at Manchester Airport (MAN) on 6 July 2025. In the Luton incident, flight EZY2335 carrying 180 passengers cleared the runway end at just 65 feet above the ground. A third, unrelated incident at London Southend Airport (SEN) in April 2026 saw five passengers offloaded because the aircraft exceeded safe take-off weight limits on the airport’s constrained runway.

All three flights involved easyJet operations at UK airports with shorter or more complex runway environments. The AAIB has flagged confirmation bias and taxiway-navigation errors as systemic contributors — not isolated pilot mistakes.

Three incidents. Three UK airports. One airline. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has now documented a pattern of runway-positioning errors involving easyJet that safety investigators describe as serious occurrences — events that completed without casualties but that could have ended differently under marginally worse conditions.

On 13 June 2025, an easyJet A320-214 operating flight EZY2335 from London Luton to Málaga began its take-off roll from a position further down the runway than the crew had calculated. The aircraft passed the runway end at 65 feet — roughly the height of a six-storey building — with 180 passengers on board. The crew did not realise the error until after completing the return leg to Luton later that day.

Less than four weeks later, on 6 July 2025, a second easyJet A320 departed Manchester for Kos from intersection J2 on runway 23R after being cleared to use intersection J1, leaving substantially less runway available than the crew’s performance calculations assumed. Night-time conditions and a complex taxiway layout contributed to the crew lining up at the wrong point without triggering any cockpit warning.

A separate April 2026 incident at London Southend Airport — where five passengers were offloaded before a Málaga departure because the aircraft exceeded safe take-off weight limits on Southend’s 1,856-metre runway — adds a third data point to what investigators are now treating as a broader operational picture at easyJet on constrained UK runways.

What the AAIB findings actually show

The Luton incident is the more viscerally alarming of the two 2025 events. Sixty-five feet at runway end is not a comfortable margin — it is the kind of number that appears in accident reports, not near-miss summaries. The AAIB confirmed the aircraft completed the flight safely, but investigators were explicit that different circumstances — higher weight, less favourable wind, a warmer day — could have produced a materially different outcome.

At Manchester, the crew was cleared to enter runway 23R at intersection J1 but instead lined up at J2, a position further along the runway. The aircraft departed with less available take-off distance than the performance data assumed. Investigators noted that complex taxiway geometry, darkness, and routine-driven taxi behaviour all contributed — the crew had no reason to doubt they were in the right place, and the aircraft’s systems raised no alert.

This is not the first time easyJet has faced AAIB scrutiny over intersection-departure errors. Previous incidents at Lisbon involved crews basing take-off thrust calculations on full-length runway positions while actually departing from shorter intersection points — a mismatch that produced very late lift-offs close to the runway end, as detailed in earlier AAIB and industry safety reporting. The recurrence across multiple airports and years is what elevates these events from isolated errors to a systemic concern.

easyJet confirmed it fully cooperated with the AAIB investigation and has completed a review of its take-off operating procedures. The airline stated that safety remains its highest priority and that pilots are trained to industry-leading standards — language that is accurate but also standard issue after any safety occurrence.

Why intersection errors keep happening — and what it means for passengers

The regulatory framework here is well-established. Take-off performance calculations are locked to a specific runway entry point; if the aircraft enters further along the runway, the available acceleration distance shrinks and the calculated speeds may no longer be achievable before the runway ends. No cockpit system automatically detects a wrong intersection entry — that cross-check is a procedural responsibility, which is precisely why confirmation bias is so dangerous in this context.

Manchester’s night-time taxiway complexity is a documented factor. The AAIB has previously flagged ground-navigation confusion at MAN in other investigations, and the airport’s ongoing terminal redevelopment adds signage and routing variability that increases cognitive load for crews during busy summer rotations. Luton’s shorter runway — at 2,162 metres, roughly 900 metres less than Stansted’s — leaves less margin for any positional error to be absorbed.

Southend’s situation is structurally different but related. At 1,856 metres, its runway is the shortest of the three airports involved. On warm days or in unfavourable wind, the performance envelope tightens to the point where passenger offloads become a routine operational tool rather than an emergency measure — airport officials confirmed this was not the first time it had happened. Travelers booking easyJet from Southend to weight-sensitive destinations like Málaga should treat offload risk as a real, if infrequent, possibility.

For context on the broader disruption picture facing UK leisure travelers this summer — including the EU’s Entry/Exit System adding up to three hours of border queuing at Schengen airports — the EES border queue risk for UK passengers compounds the operational pressure on tight turnaround schedules that contribute to these kinds of ground-navigation errors.

Steps to protect yourself on easyJet departures from constrained UK airports

Performance-related offloads and last-minute gate changes are a live risk at Luton, Manchester and Southend this summer — particularly on heavily loaded leisure routes to Spain and Greece in warm weather.

• Enable real-time notifications before you travel. Log into easyJet’s manage-booking tool at easyjet.com and confirm your contact details and app notification settings. Performance-related offload offers are made at the gate, often with a short window to respond — passengers who miss the notification miss the rebooking priority queue.
• Do not argue a performance offload at the gate. Once the load sheet is locked, the crew cannot override CAA-mandated performance limits. The correct move is to cooperate immediately, then ask for written confirmation of the reason from the airline desk — that document is your evidence for a compensation or duty-of-care claim.
• Check your rights before accepting vouchers. UK passenger-rights rules may entitle you to meals, accommodation and confirmed rebooking when an offload causes a significant delay. Review the AAIB and UK CAA guidance and the CAA’s passenger-rights pages at caa.co.uk before signing anything or accepting a partial refund.
• Ask for rerouting via a larger airport if offloaded from Southend. Southend has limited late-night transport and fewer onward frequencies. Request rebooking via Gatwick or Stansted — even if it requires a short ground transfer — rather than accepting an overnight strand at SEN.
• If connecting through Manchester on a long-haul itinerary, build extra buffer. MAN hosts Emirates, Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines on direct APAC routes, but terminal redevelopment and security bottlenecks are documented pain points that compound any easyJet departure delay.

Watch: The AAIB’s consolidated report on the 2025 Luton and Manchester incidents — expected later in 2026 — will indicate whether formal safety recommendations are issued to easyJet or the UK CAA. Formal recommendations mean mandatory procedural changes; information-only findings mean adjustments stay internal and largely invisible to passengers.

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