UK air travel industry urged to tackle ‘distressing’’ disruption for passengers

There’s further misery for some air passengers today, with travel journalist Simon Calder reporting British Airways has cancelled another 68 flights, while easyJet has cancelled 42.

There’s a handy list here.

Next weekend will also be very busy on the UK roads, as millions of people embark on an Easter getaway.

The AA estimates that more than 27.6 million car journeys are planned between Good Friday and Easter Monday (between 15th and 18th April).

Some 13.6 million are expected on Good Friday alone, leading to fears of tailbacks on popular tourist routes.

AA spokesman Tony Rich said:

“The Easter holidays look set to give British tourism a much-needed boost as people cut back on overseas travel.

“With more than 27.6 million trips planned over the bank holiday weekend, we can expect significant congestion across the UK as people flock to coastal resorts and holiday homes.”

The boss of Manchester Airport’s owner has admitted the airport does not have enough staff, and warned that the long queues at the airport could persist for months.

Charlie Cornish, chief executive of Manchester Airports Group, has written an open letter to passengers, in which he apologises for the disruption, and explains that the the airport hasn’t been able to hire staff fast enough.

Cornish says:

“The simple fact is that we don’t currently have the number of staff we need to provide the level of service that our passengers deserve.

“Despite our efforts since last autumn, the tight labour market around the airport has meant we have just not been able to hire people quickly enough to establish a full-strength team.

“Practically, staff shortages mean that we cannot open all the security lanes we need and, at times, this results in longer queues than we want to see.

“While we still expect most passengers to get through in less than 30-40 minutes, there will be times over the next few months when waiting times will rise to between 60 and 90 minutes.”

Cornish explains that the airport has interviewed 4,000 staff in the last two months, and expects around 250 new security staff to start in the operation by early May. Staff with the right level of security clearance are also being deployed to help.

Cornish advises passengers to arrive at the airport three hours before their flight leaves, to allow enough time to check-in, get through security and reach the departure gate.

He says the airport doesn’t want to cap capacity and force airlines to cancel flights, as this would cause “enormous disruption to holidays, business trips and long-awaited visits to see friends and family.”

The managing director of Manchester airport quit earlier this week after rising criticism over chaos that saw thousands of passengers missed their flights because of queues up to seven hours long.

Deputy CEO Ken O’Toole has the BBC the chaotic scenes last weekend were an “isolated incident”.

But O’Toole insists people would prefer to queue than see their flight cancelled.

We want to protect the full flying schedule. We want to make sure that after two years of people not getting away, those trips that they have booked, they can take them,” he said.

“That unfortunately does mean on occasion there will be queues which are not acceptable, they’re not what we’re aiming for.

“But the compromise between having that situation or cancelling lots of flights for people – which other airports have done in recent weeks – we believe people would prefer to accept a queue and make sure they get away.”

Those queues have been exceptionally long, though, with some passengers enduring waits of up to eight hours in terminal buildings before they could check in.