Travel firms should have been ready for post-Covid surge, UK minister says

The minister said that the travel industry should have been better prepared for a surge in holiday travel.

Stephen Parkinson, a former adviser to Theresa May, said the disruption was causing a lot of distress for people who had not been able to get away for a long time.

Many passengers are facing long delays due to flight cancellation. Between 28 May and 6 June, EasyJet has canceled more than 200 flights. Dozens of stranded passengers have been referred to the airline's disruption help page.

Several last-minute cancelations were made by Tui, including from Bristol, and they blamed supply chain issues.

This week will be the first school holidays in England and Wales since the lifting of UK Covid travel restrictions, and airports are under particular pressure because of the widespread use of travel vouchers from previously canceled holidays.

Peter Davies, the chief executive of the Airline Management Group, said that the industry was likely to be unwilling to spend money to tackle the problems faced by passengers.

When you have a lot of people arriving at the airport at seven o'clock in the morning, it has been happening for a long time.

People are reluctant to do that because it costs money and space.

The Department for Transport has been working with airlines and airports to make sure they have enough staff.

It is causing a lot of distress for people, particularly in half-term, people with family and children with them.

It's very distressing if your flight isn't ready when you show up at the airport, so we've been saying to the industry that they need to have staff.

There was a time when people weren't able to travel for obvious reasons, but there has been many months since.

James Murray said that the government had not given the right support to the sector.

We warned for months that you can't just let the airline industry and airports fall over, let them shed all of their staff, and then expect to get back on track when demand comes back.

Trade unions were warning about this and employee representatives were saying you need a sector-specific package to support the aviation sector.

The increase in demand caused the cancellation. We would like to apologize to some of our customers who have experienced flight delays recently.

The sudden increase in people going on holidays combined with various operational and supply chain issues has meant that a small number of our flights have been impacted.