‘I don’t want to miss another summer’: UK travellers braced for holiday chaos
It’s a question Maria Bataller has been asking herself for weeks: will she and her family be able to get on the flights she’s booked this summer?
She is due to fly Ryanair with her husband and young children to Spain on 27 July, but the airline’s cabin crew in Spain are going on strike this month.
“The worst thing would be to turn up at the airport at 4am with two small children and find the flight is cancelled,” said Bataller, whose company, Capikooa, makes children’s toys. “I’m really anxious because my parents are in Spain and they are getting old. I want my children to make memories – I don’t want to miss another summer.”
Like many people hoping to get away this summer, Bataller is haunted by the flight cancellations that caused so much disruption to travellers during the recent half-term break.
The uncertainty around the summer getaway will be like no other year. The pandemic created huge pent-up demand for overseas holidays, but a host of obstacles mean travellers are facing an anxious time.
Strikes, a new Covid wave and the war in Ukraine are all taking their toll. Meanwhile staff shortages and security checks mean airlines, airports and the myriad companies involved in each passenger’s journey are already stretched.
So although the government took the drastic step of ordering airlines to be “realistic” about how many flights they could deliver, leading to more than 41,000 planned cancellations so far this summer, no one in the airline industry can guarantee that passengers will not face more disruption when the great summer getaway starts in earnest later this month.
Anna Bowles, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)’s head of consumer policy and enforcement, said: “We have asked airlines to review their schedules and
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