A major airline popular with British tourists is reportedly cancelling more than 500 flights over the coming weeks, with several huge UK airports set to be impacted. Aer Lingus is cutting hundreds of flights so "mandatory maintenance" can be performed on aircraft, according to the Irish Independent.

It means tens of thousands of passengers face the prospect of travel chaos over the coming weeks. Internal Aer Lingus documents seen by the newspaper show the airline is set to axe scheduled transatlantic flights on various days over the coming weeks. The documents claim services to and from the likes of Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis-St Paul and Toronto will be hit. Flights to London Heathrow, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and Edinburgh will also be cancelled, the documents show, with passengers rebooked on to other services. The Daily Express has approached Aer Lingus for comment.

Flights from Dublin to several major European airports, including Berlin, Zurich, Athens, Faro and Amsterdam, are expected to be removed from the schedule at various points over the coming weeks.

Shannon and Cork will also see a small number of cancellations. The changes will affect flights to 30 destinations on certain routes from this week through to mid-October, although the routes themselves are not being discontinued.

In a statement to The Journal, an Aer Lingus spokesperson said the changes come as the airline begins operating its planned summer schedule.Although the spokesperson did not specify how many flights would be cut, they said that schedule changes "apply to approximately 2%" of Aer Lingus' overall schedule.

"A number of recent cancellations have been required due to mandatory maintenance on aircraft, along with a limited number of schedule adjustments," the spokesperson said.

This comes after the International Energy Agency warned that the continent may have "around six weeks of jet fuel remaining" as fears over jet fuel shortages soar.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol painted a sobering picture of the global repercussions of what he called "the largest energy crisis we have ever faced," stemming from the pinch-off of oil, gas and other vital supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.