Airport chaos – live: Easter breaks disrupted as BA and easyJet cancel dozens more flights
Airports see long queues and angry passengers as they fail to ‘scale up’ on time
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Airports see long queues and angry passengers as they fail to ‘scale up’ on time
Travellers stuck in long queues at Birmingham Airport as staff shortages lead to delays
The UK’s airports have been mired in chaos after staff shortages led to hundreds of cancelled flights and hours-long delays over the weekend.
EasyJet axed 222 flights over the weekend due to staff shortages, with around 70 more cancellations expected today.
British Airways has also cancelled some 70 flights to and from Heathrow today, following their cancellations over the weekend. Some 20,000 passengers will be affected by today’s disruption.
An easyJet spokesperson has said: “As a result of the current high rates of Covid infections across Europe, like all businesses easyJet is experiencing higher than usual levels of employee sickness.”
Elsewhere, many passengers at Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin airports have been met with long queues and delays this week as they arrive to jet off for the Easter holidays.
Airport bosses attributed the delays to the sudden growth in passenger volume as they race to hire enough new staff to deal with customer traffic, which is growing as Covid travel restrictions ease in many countries.
Yesterday Manchester mayor Andy Burnham suggested that police and firefighters could be drafted in to help control the chaos at the city’s airport, which has seen fights break out, customers jostling for space and abandoning their luggage.
Follow all the latest updates below.
Working at airports ‘pretty horrendous'
A member of ground staff working at a Scottish airport has been telling listeners to BBC Radio 2 about the stresses in aviation.
“Heather” – not her real name – blamed high level of Covid-19 infections for the long queues for security at many UK airports.
“It’s pretty horrendous, to be honest with you,” she told Jeremy Vine:
“It’s mostly down to Covid isolation rules. I was off work with it two weeks ago and I had to do my full isolation, etc, even though I felt absolutely fine.
“I mean, I’m from Scotland and I’ve had worse hangovers.
“I couldn’t go to work – I felt bad because I knew my team were short.”
She said passengers were adding to the problems by failing to organise the necessary Covid documentation for international travel in advance.
In addition, the reduction in cabin baggage allowances during the past couple of years had taken some travellers by surprise, causing disputes at the departure gate.
“It’s a pretty dreadful job right now, to be honest,” she said.
Simon Calder5 April 2022 14:28
Passengers stuck in long queues at Birmingham airport as staff shortages lead to delays
Passengers are stuck in lengthy queues at Birmingham Airport as staff shortages lead to long delays.
Delays at the airport began on Monday (4 April) as the Easter holidays began in the UK.
A spokesperson for Birmingham Airport told Birmingham Live on Monday that the cause of the problem was a sudden return of people wanting to fly, but the airport did not have the right numbers of security officers to check everyone through as quickly as they would like.
Travellers stuck in long queues at Birmingham Airport as staff shortages lead to delays
Holly Patrick5 April 2022 13:31
Why are airport security queues currently so long?
The problem has the same root as the widespread cancellations on British Airways and easyJet: a surge in demand for holidays abroad following the UK’s removal, after nearly two years, of travel restrictions.
Covid is having a huge impact in two ways. First, current levels of staff sickness are higher than normal. But there is also a long-term effect – in terms of the tens of thousands of aviation professionals who have left the industry, taking with them everything from decades of experience to security clearance.
Airlines and airports are now struggling to recruit suitable staff – and train them, and get them security cleared. Starting work at 4am in a high-stress environment is not everyone’s idea of a great job.
In addition, the airports say that during the coronavirus pandemic many passengers haven’t flown and may have forgotten the “liquids rule” (all liquids in hand luggage must be no more than 100ml and presented in a sealed plastic bag). When bags have to be hand-searched, the security process is dramatically slowed down.
Simon Calder5 April 2022 13:15
Dublin Airport saw three hour delays
Dublin Airport was still experiencing long queues last night, reports Alice Murphy, an editor with The Independent.
She arrived at Dublin airport on Monday almost three hours before her flight to Stansted – and barely made it to the gate before it closed.
Ms Murphy waited to scan her boarding pass for well over an hour in a queue that snaked back to the terminal door, before standing in line for another 40 minutes before she reached the top of security clearance, captured in a video, below.
She said she has “never seen so many bags being swabbed for explosives at any airport, ever”, and couldn’t believe the time it took to transit through an airport that usually offers a relatively stress-free travel experience.
“It seems incredible that issues with staffing shortages would not have been foreseen ahead of what is arguably the first post-Covid holiday period for the aviation industry,” she says.
Passengers wait in long queues at Dublin Airport amid security chaos
Lucy Thackray5 April 2022 12:30
What are your rights if you miss a flight due to airport queues?
A leading lawyer says the options for travellers who miss their flights due to long airport queues are tricky.
Gary Rycroft, partner with Lancaster firm Joseph A Jones, says the provisions of the Consumer Rights Act – which require firms to carry out a service with “reasonable care and skill” – do not apply as travellers have no direct contractual relationship with the airport.
He told The Independent: “Courts will determine there is a legal duty of care beyond a strict contractual relationship if three criteria are met:
For a claim in tort for negligence, Mr Rycroft says, “establishing a ‘duty of care’ and ‘breach’ of that duty are essential first steps in bringing a claim”.
It would need to be shown that the delays at security led to missing the flight.
Read the full story:
Simon Calder5 April 2022 11:56
Industry source says slow vetting of airline staff is behind shortages
Following hundreds of flight cancellations over the past week, some airline industry figures are blaming government screening processes for the staff shortages that have led to flight cancellations this week.
An unnamed industry source told The Telegraph that vetting “airside” staff for security purposes - a process that involves around 14-15 weeks to complete - is taking “substantially longer” than usual.
The source told the paper that the already lengthy process of staff being vetted by the government is taking weeks longer than it should in England, and months longer in Northern Ireland.
The process involves a potential employee’s previous five years of employment and criminal record being scrutinised before they are vetted by the UK Security Vetting (UKSV) service, part of the Cabinet Office.
Read the full story:
Lucy Thackray5 April 2022 11:26
Emergency services could help tackle Manchester Airport queues, says mayor
Police could be called in to help with the mayhem at Manchester Airport, the city’s mayor has suggested.
“We don’t want to see the scenes that we saw at the weekend and we obviously need to work with them to work through those issues and make sure we’re managing those things,” said Andy Burnham.
Mr Burnham is set to meet airport chiefs today to seek reassurance and offer his support.
Read the full story:
Helen Coffey5 April 2022 10:58
What’s early? Airports need to ‘do better’, says Which? editor
Which? Travel editor Rory Boland has implored airports to “do better” than advising their customers to arrive earlier.
“Airports need to do better than ‘arrive early for your flight’ because of long queues. What’s early? 3, 4, 5 hours?” he tweeted.
“Airports know how many passengers there will be each day and how many staff there are, roughly. They should give passengers a concrete time, to the hour, to arrive.”
Lucy Thackray5 April 2022 10:00
easyJet says ‘vast majority’ of flights will operate normally
Britain’s biggest budget airline has said “the vast majority” of its flights will take off as normal today.
More than 70 easyJet flights to, from or within the UK have been cancelled on Tuesday, with passengers at the airline’s main base, Gatwick, worst affected.
The total schedule is 1,525 flights, indicating that around one in 20 has been grounded across the network – but the UK is disproportionately badly hit.
An easyJet spokesperson said “a small proportion” had been cancelled “to give customers the ability to rebook onto alternative flights”.
Airlines are required to get passengers to their destination on the original day of travel if at all possible, on any airline.
The spokesperson said: “We are sorry for any inconvenience for affected customers.”
Simon Calder5 April 2022 09:35
Today’s cancellations: Gatwick and Heathrow passengers worst affected
Around 20,000 passengers booked on the UK’s biggest airlines have found their flights for Tuesday have been cancelled.
The Independent has calculated that both British Airways and easyJet have cancelled more than 70 flights.
BA’s cancellations involve domestic and European flights to and from its main base, London Heathrow. Destinations with multiple cancellations include Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Milan.
The vast majority of BA’s cancellations were announced around two weeks ago, as the airline culled its schedule in order to cope with limited resources.
By far the worst affected easyJet base is its main hub, Gatwick, which has seen 44 cancellations so far today – including some longer holiday flights to Greek destinations such as Corfu, Kos and Preveza.
Ten Luton flights have been cancelled, with Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool and Belfast International also affected.
Simon Calder5 April 2022 09:16
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