BA and easyJet cancel more than 150 flights as travel chaos continues

theguardian.com:

British Airways and easyJet cancelled more than 150 flights to and from the UK on Wednesday, as holidaymakers faced further departure lounge delays going into the extended Queen’s platinum jubilee bank holiday.

BA cancelled at least 124 short-haul flights at Heathrow airport, although the airline said passengers were given advance notice.

The low-cost carrier easyJet scrapped at least 31 flights at Gatwick airport, including those scheduled to depart for Bologna, Barcelona, Prague, Krakow, and Edinburgh.

The travel operator Tui has cancelled six flights a day from Manchester airport for the whole of June. Manchester airport blamed the move on staffing shortages at Tui and its ground handler Swissport, which manages its check-in and baggage handling.

In the latest day of flight cancellations and disruption at airports, one easyJet passenger tweeted a photograph taken shortly after 4am at Manchester airport, which showed a lengthy queue of people in the terminal’s car park.

Describing the situation as “carnage”, the passenger wrote: “Took two hours 45 minutes to get through — most of that was bag drop. Now on the aircraft, but due to shortage of ground crew, there’s going to be another delay of approximately 50 minutes.”

Manchester airport is expecting more than 330,000 passengers to pass through the airport between Thursday 2 June and Sunday 5 June. The airport apologised for disruption and said it was in contact with senior management at airlines and ground handlers. It is advising passengers to arrive three hours before their flight. Another easyJet passenger complained of having to wait for more than two and a half hours to collect their luggage, after they landed at Gatwick airport shortly before 3am. He called this “simply