Blame game takes off amid holiday travel chaos

Airlines, baggage handlers and air traffic controllers are all pointing the finger as ministers demand answers, writes Oliver Gill

Donning a hi-vis vest, one of Tui’s pilots charged off the plane and onto the tarmac at Manchester Airport. Passengers were left shocked as he shoved a trolley of luggage and began loading bags into the hold so the Boeing 737-800 could finally begin its journey to Heraklion, Crete, on Monday afternoon.

“Can we get Simon the co-pilot … an excellence award,” asked Jenny Cook, an HR manager on board. “He is out on the tarmac in the rain helping to load the bags to try and get us on our way after a 30-hour delay so far.”

Holidaymakers are once again suffering from chaos at Britain’s airports during school holidays – just weeks after a series of grovelling apologies by both airports and airlines after widespread disruption at Easter.

Hours-long queues snaking their way from terminal buildings into car parks, long delays and cancellations at short notice has further blotted the copybook of aviation chiefs.

This time, however, the blame game is in full swing. Ministers are accusing bosses. Airport chiefs are blaming their counterparts at airlines, and airlines are blaming less well-known ground handling operators responsible for check-in staff and baggage handlers. Ground handling operators are, in turn, blaming airlines and airports.

And in a fresh twist last night, senior airline sources turned on air traffic control operators, which had been forced to limit the number of planes in British skies because of a lack of staff.

The backdrop to Britain’s half-term holiday hell was the chaos during Easter – the first test of the aviation industry’s resilience after enduring two years of travel restrictions. It was blamed on a lack of security staff at airports, which need to be put through Government vetting procedure before they can start work.

However, bosses insist that this time, holidaymakers have been hit by a different type of chaos.

Manchester airport pointed the finger at Swissport – one of the biggest airport ground handling companies in the world – for woes that led to Tui cancelling a quarter of its flights.

“From extensive discussions with the Tui and Swissport management teams, it is clear that they are experiencing temporary staff shortages,” said an airport spokesman.

Insiders claim the cancellations at Manchester, ruining the holiday plans of tens of thousands of Red Wall voters, are not the airport’s fault.

“The queues that we have at the moment, and have done since Saturday, are the result of Tui and Swissport,” one says. “Airlines should be very clear that the ground handlers are their responsibility.”

The rhetoric behind the scenes has been even stronger. “Over the

‘Give us assurances, or reduce your schedule, or we’ll have to do it by force’

‘Despite warnings, operators seriously oversold flights relative to their capacity’

weekend we’ve been saying: ‘What the hell, we sold you [Tui] this capacity because we thought you were good to run it. So give us assurances, or reduce your schedule, or we’ll have to do it by force to you’,” the person adds.

Tui was suitably contrite, saying the cancellations, agreed in the early hours of yesterday morning, were an “incredibly difficult decision”.

A spokesman said: “We would like to apologise to our customers who have experienced flight delays and cancellations in recent days.”

A Swissport spokesman said: “We are very sorry for our part in the disruption people are experiencing. We are working hard to address our resource challenges, with over 2,000 new hirings since the start of the year. We will continue to work with our partners to find solutions for this industry-wide issue.”

Part of the problem is that ground handling companies have long been the “whipping boys” within the sector, one industry source explains.

Forced by airlines to shoulder waferthin profit margins for years, Swissport and its rivals such as Dubai-owned dnata and Scotland-based Menzies Aviation have been unable to invest in technological means to reduce the dependency on blue-collar workers.

The source says: “The ground handling crews are not digital. Everything is done with what we call bingo cards, stickers on a piece of paper – because changing costs money.

“We can’t hire people, because it’s minimum wage. Everyone wants to work for Amazon or Tesco or Sainsbury’s – because they pay better.”

Nevertheless, not everyone agrees that airports are innocent this time around. “Airports are still firmly part of the problem. Bristol has been a shocker over the last few days, for example,” says one airline chief executive.

The Telegraph can disclose fresh claims that disruption at Gatwick is the result of a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers.

Gatwick, which escaped much of the chaos over Easter, has suffered the most cancellations over the past week, almost five times as many as at Heathrow and Manchester, according to data provider Cirium.

One airline executive says: “The air traffic control situation in London is bad. Which you would never normally see on a Tuesday in May – not even on a Tuesday in July and August. They’re [already] short-staffed in Gatwick. We are down to half the number of movements that we can normally do.” A spokesman for NATS said: “The whole of the European network experienced delays over the weekend due to a number of major events that caused spikes in traffic, for example the Champions League final, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Cannes film festival, all coupled with a surge in demand from half-term holidays.

“NATS handled some 24pc of total European traffic last week, but was responsible for only 4pc of delays.”

Conscious that Red Wall voters were among the hardest hit by the travel chaos at airports such as Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, Grant Shapps turned up the heat on industry chiefs.

The Transport Secretary said: “We will be meeting with airports, airlines and ground handlers again 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.

“Government has done its part. It is now on airports, airlines and ground handlers to make sure everyone’s well deserved holidays can go ahead free from the major disruption we’ve seen in recent days.”

Shapps’s hardline approach, perhaps more designed for the electorate than delivering meaningful industry change, went down dreadfully among aviation bosses.

During the pandemic an informal group of aviation executives – which included the likes of former British Airways head Willie Walsh, easyjet boss Johan Lundgren and Gatwick chief executive Stewart Wingate – regularly met to discuss the parlous state of the sector. Bemoaning the lack of government support featured prominently, as well as the minister’s perceived dismissive approach.

“Grant Shapps was known as Lord Lucan,” a source says. “There were 12 of us chief execs that used to get together – from airlines, ground handlers and airports. We had a bit of a club and called Shapps ‘Lord Lucan’, because he never used to turn up to meetings.”