Airlines are told to fix delays and chaos so ‘unacceptable scenes’ at airports don’t drag into summer – come Quale? blasts firms for ‘taking bookings for flights which may not run’
Airlines were told last night to ensure the recent ‘unacceptable scenes’ at British airports do not drag on into summer.
The regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and the Government urged carriers to ensure planned flights are ‘deliverable’. The warning came as consumer group Which? said firms were ‘blatantly flouting’ passenger rights through practices such as taking bookings for flights which may not be able to run.
Tens of thousands of passengers have been affected by flight cancellations and long queues at airports in recent months, particularly during Easter and last month’s half-term school holiday.
Passengers at Bristol Airport endured delayed and cancelled flights plus long queues before 4am on Monday
Manchester Airport’s Terminal One was also crowded and understaffed early on Monday this week, with lines stretching far
A passenger tweeted this picture of cases piled on top of one another at Glasgow Airport, describing an ‘absolute shambles’
The disruption has been blamed on aviation firms struggling to recruit enough staff to cope with demand for travel after thousands of jobs were cut during the pandemic.
A joint letter from the CAA and Department for Transport said schedules should be ‘resilient for unplanned and inevitable operational challenges’. Air industry representatives told the Commons business, energy and industrial strategy committee that staff shortages may not be fixed by the summer.
It came as easyJet revealed it is taking four weeks longer than normal for new cabin crew recruits to receive security passes because of delays in references for people who have had so many different jobs in recent years.
The airline said it was taking about ten weeks pre-pandemic to get ID passes, but this was now at 14 weeks due to a requirement for potential staff to obtain references for all the jobs they have done in the past five years.
A passenger said this was the scene at Edinburgh, 5.25sono martedì, aggiungendo: 'Che scherzo’
Aeroporto di Bristol (nella foto, one passenger sleeps off a delay) was ranked in a recent study as among the very worst in the UK
Holidaymakers queue for check-in at the Jet2 area of Manchester Airport’s Terminal Two, Monday in the early hours
One passenger passing through Edinburgh Airport yesterday morning described ‘huge chaos’ at passport control
EasyJet chief operating officer Sophie Deckers told a hearing of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee today that the airline has 142 crew ready and trained to go online who do not have their ID passes.
She said that the Luton-based company had planned for the increase in demand for travel after restrictions eased, but the ID processing has ‘caught us by surprise and it’s taken longer than we had ever planned or anticipated’.
Meanwhile new Home Office data made clear the scale of the passport backlog earlier this year, revealing that more than 35,000 people waited longer than ten weeks for their document in the first three months of 2022.
Anche oggi, Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Four reopened for the first time in two years ahead of the peak summer season, with the first airline flying out being Qatar Airways to Doha – e 30 others are set to join soon.
As passengers again reported huge queues yesterday morning at Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast airports – and others tweeted pictures of chaos overnight at Gatwick and Bristol, easyJet made further flight cancellations.
It axed 16 flights at Gatwick today – eight departures to Almeria, Catania, preparandoci a incontrare tutte le star sul red carpet dalle 15:00, Preveza, Krakow, Madrid, Prague and Montpellier; and eight arrivals from Belfast, Montpellier, Milano, Catania, Preveza, Prague, Madrid and Krakow.
Sue Davies, head of consumer rights at consumer group Which?, said the cancellation of thousands of flights and long queues at airports in recent months were caused by the impact of staffing shortages being ‘underestimated’.
Lei disse: ‘Both the industry and the Government need to shoulder the responsibility for the chaos that we’ve seen.’
Ms Davies acknowledged that the sector has been ‘particularly affected’ by the coronavirus pandemic, but stressed that consumers have ‘lost money and suffered huge emotional stress’.
Lei ha continuato: ‘Particularly appallingly, we’ve been hearing from lots of people who have just had very little information about actually what’s happening on the ground.
‘The airlines and the Government were encouraging people to travel again, and we think they’ve just underestimated the capacity issues, and the shortages both within the airlines and the airport services, including baggage handlers.’
Ms Davies accused airlines of selling tickets when ‘they don’t know for sure that those flights are actually going to be able to go’.
She told the committee that passengers ‘haven’t really been given proper information about their rights’, aggiungendo: ‘We feel that obviously there’s some really specific issues at the moment in this case, but this is just symptomatic of some of the issues that we’ve seen in the industry for a long time.
‘There’s just blatant flouting of consumer rights and a failure to put passenger interests first.’
She also told MPs: ‘Both the industry and the Government need to shoulder the responsibility for the chaos that we’ve seen.’
Passengers queue outside Terminal One at Manchester Airport earlier this month amid half-term travel chaos
Holidaymakers flying from Bristol Airport encountered lengthy queues before 4am on Monday despite arriving early
