With an extra long weekend for the Jubilee and half-term for thousands of kids across the UK, many families are taking advantage and setting off on their first foreign holiday for two years. According to research by American Express, this summer is set to be a bumper year for travel, with 40 billion dollars expected to be spent, up from 5 billion dollars last year.
Is the country ready? There are pictures of people sleeping on floors, long lines at airports, and hundreds of flights being canceled on social media. I spoke to Hilary Osborne, the Guardian's money and consumer editor, about why this is happening and whether it will improve in time for summer. You may want to keep reading if you have a holiday booked. The headlines first.
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Over two million people are expected to travel over the bank holiday weekend. airports across the country are facing significant disruption due to the increase in Covid-hit years. People are being told to wait for hours at a time for flights that are getting canceled. Why? Hilary says that it's a perfect storm of inflation, Covid, and the effects of Britain leaving the European Union.
Why is this happening?
When travel abroad was halted more or less completely in 2020, we should look back to understand what's happening now. In the year 2021, there were almost a million fewer flights than in the year 2019. The industry took a hammering during the first lockdown, and despite the government funnelling the biggest companies money to help keep them afloat, it wasn't enough: tens of thousands of jobs were cut.
It wasn't clear when things would get better for the travel industry and when they needed to gear up their operations again, because everything was dependent on how the Pandemic would turn out. It may seem obvious that when the world opened up again there would be a surge in demand for flights. They can't really be blamed for holding back.
It looks like things are getting back to normal in Britain after a robust vaccination campaign, loosened border restrictions and no sign of a more dangerous variant. According to the Financial Times, the number of scheduled flights last month was almost identical to the number of flights in 2019. The infrastructure isn't back in place, the people aren't there and of course once you start, airports are struggling to cope with the increased demand.
Covid is not the only one.
Despite a big recruitment drive, the aviation industry isn't able to fill roles quickly enough. Airlines need a lot of different jobs to operate, but there are a lot of staff shortages following the Pandemic. Huge numbers of workers are needed in airports and some of the jobs are sensitive, requiring lengthy background checks and training. In desperation, airlines have started to relax some of their policies.
Paul Charles, CEO of the PC Agency tells me that the aviation industry traditionally hires people from Europe. It costs more to hire people because of inflation, the industry is in competition.
Many employees were paid to leave travel firms, so the companies are having to offer incentives to bring them back in. The factors make travelling for customers more difficult.
What's next?
Hilary says that there are too many moving parts to make big predictions. The disruptions are going to continue in the coming weeks. Despite all the demand, the global industry is still set to lose $11 billion this year. There is no guarantee that a holiday this summer is going to go smoothly.
If the airline industry is able to get its house in order before the next holiday peak at the end of July, they will be able to mitigate a lot of the disruption. That's a big deal. It is highly unlikely that people will put their holiday plans on hold for a third year, so there is a good chance that the chaos will continue for a while.
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