Customers angry over Tui handling of travel misery

Holidaymakers are continuing to face disruption at airports, with more than 150 flights cancelled on Wednesday.

Airlines including EasyJet and Tui were among those to make cancellations, although most customers will have been given advance notice.

There have also been long queues at terminals ahead of the Jubilee weekend.

The transport secretary said airlines and operators, which are struggling with staff shortages, had “seriously oversold flights and holidays”.

EasyJet has cancelled at least 31 flights at Gatwick, to destinations including Bologna, Barcelona, Prague, Krakow and Edinburgh.

Last week the airline said around 24 flights a day would be cancelled from the airport between 28 May and 6 June.

Tui Airways is also continuing to cancel six daily flights at Manchester Airport, representing a quarter of its schedule and affecting around 34,000 travellers.

The company said all customers affected had been contacted, but some people told the BBC their flight had vanished from schedules and they had not heard from Tui.

British Airways has cancelled 124 short-haul flights at Heathrow, although the airline said these were pre-planned and passengers were told in advance.

Airlines UK, which represents the major British airlines, said the “vast majority” of flights would be operating as scheduled.

Up to two million people are preparing to fly over the next few days, with the Jubilee bank holiday coinciding with half-term.

Chris Thompson, who is on holiday with his wife and three children in Izmir, Turkey, said the family were told their Tui flight home had been cancelled after they had already got through passport control.

He told the BBC the way the disruption was handled had been “absolutely abysmal”.

The family were put up in a hotel on Tuesday night after spending more than five hours at the airport and were told they could get a flight back to Manchester at 16:00.

“Not knowing what’s going on is becoming frustrating,” he said. “The Tui number is constantly engaged.”

Steve Butcher, from Gravesend, was due to fly on holiday to Paphos, Cyprus, on Wednesday morning.

But he woke up to an email from Tui saying their holiday was cancelled.

“My wife was in tears, she was so looking forward to it. We were all packed and ready to go,” he told the BBC.

Steve said he then received another email from Tui saying their flight was now on Thursday morning, but he is unsure whether to go to the airport tomorrow.

“If we do, we have to stay in a Travelodge as we will need to arrive in the early hours. But what if it gets cancelled again?”

Tui apologised to customers affected, adding: “Whilst every cancellation is regrettable, the vast majority of our flights are operating as planned, with more than 26,000 customers taking off yesterday on holiday.”

According to flight tracking firm Cirium, 377 flights have been cancelled from UK airports during the last week (25-31 May), with easyJet the most affected airline and Gatwick the airport worst hit.

Mr Shapps said the government had been clear that it was up to industry leaders to tackle travel disruption, which was also seen at Easter.

The transport secretary said he would meet with airports, airlines and ground handlers to “find out what’s gone wrong and how they are planning to end the current run of cancellations and delays”.

“Despite government warnings, operators seriously oversold flights and holidays relative to their capacity to deliver. This must not happen again and all efforts should be directed at there being no repeat of this over the summer – the first post-Covid summer season,” he added.

But Labour accused the government of being “missing in action”.

Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh called on ministers to “take responsibility” for tackling the disruption by addressing the backlog in security checks for new staff and working with industry to address “chronic low-pay”.

The aviation industry is suffering from staff shortages as it struggles to recruit replacements for the thousands of workers it laid off during the pandemic when international travel was halted.

Before Covid, airports and airlines across Britain employed around 140,000 people, but since then thousands of jobs have been cut, including around 30,000 for UK airlines alone.

Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency and a former Virgin Atlantic director, said the industry had been “overwhelmed” since demand for flights returned after the pandemic but argued the government itself was “responsible for this chaos”.

“[The transport secretary] has got a bit of a nerve I’m afraid,” he told the BBC. “It’s because of government restrictions that changed so much during the pandemic, and then the shutdown of the industry with the Omicron variant last December, that has created this problem.”

He added that without certainty over when travel restrictions would be eased, the industry was not able to recruit more staff.

Kelly Sandhu, from the Aviation Recruitment Network, said the process of hiring new workers took a long time so there was “not a quick fix” .

Airlines UK said the sector had “only a matter of weeks to recover and prepare for one of the busiest summers we’ve seen in many years” but, despite this, “the vast majority” of flights this week would be operating as scheduled.

The final Covid restrictions for people travelling to the UK were lifted on 18 March.

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