British Airways cancels more flights over summer
British Airways cancels MORE flights sparking fears of summer travel chaos: Boss says schedule will be trimmed down until June as it struggles with staff shortages
- British Airways will cancel more flights for at least next two months amid fears over ‘summer of travel chaos’
- BA is cutting around 100 daily services due to staff shortages and this will continue until at least end of June
- Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has met with BA and urged airlines to ‘get reliability back into the system’
British Airways will continue cancelling flights for at least the next two months amid concerns over a ‘summer of travel chaos’ as the flagship carrier cuts around 100 daily services due to staff shortages.
BA has cancelled more than 1,000 flights over the last three weeks with travellers normally given several days’ notice, and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has urged airlines to ‘get reliability back into the system again’.
Acknowledging that many staff were off work due to the recent rise in Covid-19 cases, Mr Shapps said operators underestimated passenger demand and he has held urgent talks with BA chief Sean Doyle about the situation.
Mr Doyle told staff in a video message this week that airline would cut schedules until the end of June – a month longer than previously billed – to make them reliable, having previously said flights would be cut until May.
Appearing before the Transport Committee at Parliament today to answer questions about the recent chaos, Mr Shapps was asked by Labour MP Ben Bradshaw: ‘BA is cancelling nearly 100 flights today in and out of Heathrow, so can you guarantee the British public are not going to face a summer of travel chaos, as they did at Easter?’
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps (left, at the Transport Committee hearing in Parliament today) has held urgent talks with British Airways chief Sean Doyle (right, file picture) about the situation with flight cancellations over the past month
Passengers queue to check in at London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Two on April 9 amid airport disruption this month
Mr Shapps replied: ‘You’ll be interested to know I had Sean Doyle into my office yesterday – the boss of British Airways – to ask him exactly this question. Obviously they’re a private company. He told me that they were proactively, in advance now, slimming down their programme in order to be able to meet the demand.
‘He also explained that the problems were actually growing pains in lots of different directions – very, very quickly.
Passport farce as fast-track site crashes
The fiasco over passport delays descended further into farce this week as the fast-track service crashed.
Millions are thought to have delayed renewing their documents during the pandemic and officials are struggling with a backlog of applications. The ten-week target for processing is repeatedly being breached, with applicants waiting up to five months.
The Passport Office offers a fast-track service that offers a one-week turnaround at the higher price of £142 for an adult passport and £122 for a child. But holidaymakers desperately trying to use the service yesterday were greeted with a ‘system busy’ message.
The webpage on gov.uk added: ‘Sorry, we’re experiencing high demand for this service at the moment and the system is busy. Please try again later.’
It was displaying the message for most of yesterday morning and afternoon.
Under post-Brexit travel rules, UK travellers must have at least three months’ validity on documents, which threatens to put more strain on the system.
Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye said: ‘It’s really disappointing to hear about delays. If it’s not resolved, it is going to mean that people can’t get away.’
‘So they are primarily OK with I think for example pilots, but those on the ground – baggage handling side of things, for example – had been much harder in a very, very tight employment market, where thankfully we have getting on for full employment, they found quite difficult to do.’
Airlines – also including easyJet – have had to cancel flights over the past month after becoming unable to cope with a surge in demand around the Easter holidays, and they are battling to rehire enough staff who were let go or left during the pandemic.
According to the Financial Times, Mr Doyle told staff that the airline has grown its schedule from 30 per cent of normal to 80 per cent in only a few months, adding: ‘It’s crucial that we do all we can to give our customers confidence about their upcoming trips.’
He did not confirm how many more flights would now be cancelled, but said: ‘Everyone is recruiting for frontline roles and the referencing processes are taking too long for people to get clearance to work at airports.’
Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye yesterday called for ministers to slash red tape to make it quicker for operators to recruit new staff.
He said allowing operators access to HMRC records showing a new recruit’s previous employers could speed up the process by two to four weeks.
This would allow operators to fill vacancies more quickly and help avoid disruption as passenger numbers ramp up for the summer.
Today, Mr Shapps said the issue of security clearance was something the Department of Transport had been considering as a way of assisting the aviation industry.
He told the Transport Committee today: ‘I can’t, and the Committee wouldn’t expect me to, compromise in any way, shape or form with aviation security, but I have looked at the rules and have found an area where we can assist with bureaucracy particularly with regard to new people coming into the industry and then need to be security checked.
‘We can begin the training without exposing them to parts of the training which are security-related, without having the security check complete, as long as it’s complete before they start on the security-related stuff.
Passengers queue to enter airport security at Terminal Five of London Heathrow Airport on April 14
British Airways cancelled 100 European and domestic flights yesterday. Pictured: File image of a BA plane at Heathrow
‘And I have a statutory instrument – I think it actually comes in front of the House today – to do exactly that. Actually, it’s a small Brexit freedom that’s enabled us to do it, and this is an example of how we’ll try to work with the sector but in the end they will have to resolve these problems by getting people in the right places.’
Travellers urged to use £85m unspent vouchers
Holidaymakers are being urged to use unspent vouchers worth £85 million before they lose financial protection.
This is the total value of unused refund credit notes (RCNs) given to customers by travel firms for package holidays cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said. The vouchers can be put towards the cost of a new holiday or exchanged for cash.
Any issued between March 10, 2020 and December 19, 2021 are covered by the Atol scheme, which means holders will not lose out if the company they booked with goes bust. That protection expires on September 30.
Michael Budge, head of Atol, which is run by the CAA, said: ‘Millions of holidaymakers have missed out on travel over the past two years, with many being offered refund credit notes during the pandemic.
‘As demand for travel continues to grow again, we want to make sure consumers are making the most of the financial protection available to them. If you have a refund credit note, make an Atol-protected booking or request a refund well before September 30 to avoid putting your money at risk.’
Consumers were legally entitled to cash refunds within 14 days for package holidays cancelled due to the virus crisis. But many travel firms offered RCNs as an alternative to help their cash flow during the disruption.
It comes as the fiasco over passport delays descended further into farce this week as the fast-track service crashed. Millions are thought to have delayed renewing their documents during the pandemic and officials are struggling with a backlog of applications.
The ten-week target for processing is repeatedly being breached, with applicants waiting up to five months.
The Passport Office offers a fast-track service that offers a one-week turnaround at the higher price of £142 for an adult passport and £122 for a child.
But holidaymakers desperately trying to use the service yesterday were greeted with a ‘system busy’ message.
The webpage on gov.uk added: ‘Sorry, we’re experiencing high demand for this service at the moment and the system is busy. Please try again later.’
Meanwhile the board of BA’s owners International Airlines Group are said to be concerned about a lack of investment in IT at the airline.
Last month BA had its third computer meltdown this year and 1,000 flights were cancelled or delayed over one weekend. More than 1,000 have been cancelled since, partly because of staff shortages after it cut thousands of jobs in the pandemic.
Passengers say that they have also been unable to get through to customer services or check in online. Others waited days to be sent luggage that could not be unloaded from planes.
Travellers have faced long queues at airports such as Birmingham, Heathrow and Manchester, and Mr Shapps said yesterday that airlines ‘underestimated how much demand there will be’, and a rise in coronavirus cases ‘would have caused problems’ with ‘a lot of people’ off work.
He told Times Radio: ‘I am concerned and I’m going to be meeting with some of the airlines who have been routinely cancelling.
‘I’m sure it’s in their interest as is the travelling public to see them get their schedules back together, and I’m meeting with them this week to understand their plans to bring the schedules back together. We need to get reliability back into the system again.’
A BA spokesman was contacted for comment by MailOnline today.
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