Grounded by a lack of planning

Travel bosses never stopped moaning about how hard their industry was hit by the pandemic. Yet just as British holidaymakers stand ready to give them a leg up, they shoot themselves in the foot.

The half-term Jubilee break and the forthcoming summer holidays seemed to be as much of a surprise to these people as the iceberg was to the Titanic – another foreseeable travel disaster.

And Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham warns on these pages today that bosses are so clueless that the chaos could last into next year.

We presume the forward planning teams in airlines and Whitehall were laid off along with the 60,000 travel jobs they shed.

And as a result airline bosses and Grant Shapps did not realise that summer was coming.

It should have been blindingly obvious those 60,000 workers would be needed again. Self-evident that rehiring would take longer than firing.

And glaringly apparent that it would be a serious fail to sell holidays to customers when there might not be the capacity to provide them.

Rishi Sunak spent £400billion on Covid measures such as furlough to ensure the economy would bounce back after the pandemic.

It was Mr Shapps responsibility as Transport Secretary to make it a condition that the £8billion of that which went to airlines had a jobs guarantee attached. And that staff pandemic pay cuts should be reinstated.

Home Secretary Priti Patel should also have ensured the Passport Office had enough staff to cope with the flood of applications it knew it would get.

Some businesses learned from the pandemic. Tens of thousands of office staff are proving the worth of flexible working and four-day weeks are being trialled successfully.

But now we are getting over Covid we need a cure for the incompetence of those in charge of our travel.