British holidaymakers hoping to jet off this week face continuing travel disruption across the UK, with widespread airport queues, flight delays and cancellations.
Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet, has cancelled at least 40 domestic and European flights on Wednesday – mainly to and from its biggest base, London Gatwick airport.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that police were called in to help hundreds of Tui passengers “abandoned” on the runway at Manchester airport for three hours on Sunday.
Grant Shapps is the latest politician to weigh in, laying the blame for the chaos squarely on the travel industry.
The transport secretary accused airlines and tour operators of “seriously overselling flights and holidays”.
He said he’d meet with airports, airlines and ground handlers to “find out what’s gone wrong and how they are planning to end the current run of cancellations and delays”.
“Despite government warnings, operators seriously oversold flights and holidays relative to their capacity to deliver. This must not happen again and all efforts should be directed at there being no repeat of this over the summer – the first post-Covid summer season,” said Mr Shapps.
