Aviation sector urged to ‘resolve’ travel chaos
TRANSPORT secretary Grant Shapps said last Sunday (5) the government would work with the aviation industry to avoid a repeat of the chaos at airports last week, as passengers faced lengthy delays and cancellations of hundreds of flights.
Airports across Europe have struggled to cope with a postpandemic rebound in demand, but British airports have been particularly hit by major disruption over the past week. Schools were on a half-term break and the country also had a long public holiday weekend to mark the Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
Shapps, who said last week that airlines should stop selling tickets for flights they could not staff, said the industry had to sort out the problem.
“The industry needs to solve it,” he told BBC News. “The government doesn’t run airports, it doesn’t run the airlines. The industry needs to do that.”
Airlines had hoped for a bumper summer for passengers after two years of Covid-19 travel restrictions. But they have struggled to recruit staff after the turmoil of the pandemic, and complain it is taking longer to recruit new employees and
vet them for security clearance.
Shapps said staff cuts during the pandemic had gone too deep.
“We’ll work with the industry very hard ... to make sure we don’t see a repeat of those scenes,” he said.
A change in the law was making it easier to deal with the administration needed for security clearance, he said, adding that he did not see a need for the army to be called in to help speed up security checks.
Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab accused airlines of a “lack of preparation” in the run-up to the holiday surge.
“Throughout the pandemic, the government provided £8 billion of support,” he told Sky News. “There’s been some tweaks to the regulation to make it easier for the airline industry to hire.
“I don’t think the airline operators have done the recruitment that they should have done, and taken the advice the transport secretary gave them.”
In response, Airlines UK, the industry organisation representing UK-registered carriers, said the sector was still emerging from “the worst crisis in the history of aviation”.
“Airlines were grounded for almost two years as a result of one of the most restrictive travel regimes in the world. The sector has had only a matter of weeks to recover and prepare for one of the busiest summers we’ve seen in many years.
“Despite this, and without the ability to know when restrictions would be completely removed or predict how much flying would be possible over the summer, the vast majority of the many tens of thousands of UK-departing flights a week will be operating as scheduled.”