Travel firms should have been ready for post-Covid surge, UK minister says

theguardian.com:

The travel industry should have been better prepared for a surge in post-pandemic holidays, a government minister has said, after scenes of travel chaos in airports ahead of the half-term break.

The arts minister, Stephen Parkinson, a former adviser to Theresa May, said that disruption was causing “a lot of distress” for people who had not been able to get away for several years because of the pandemic.

Flight cancellations have led many passengers facing long delays to their half-term breaks, including easyJet, which has cancelled more than 200 flights to and from Gatwick between 28 May and 6 June. EasyJet’s Twitter feed has been referring dozens of stranded Gatwick passengers to its disruption help hub webpage.

Tui also made several last-minute cancellations including from Gatwick, Birmingham and Bristol, blaming “operational and supply chain issues”.

Airports are under particular pressure because of the widespread use of travel vouchers from previously cancelled holiday, and this week will be the first school holidays in England and Wales since the lifting of all UK Covid travel restrictions.

The chief executive of the Airline Management Group, Peter Davies, said the industry was likely to be reluctant to spend money to tackle the bottlenecks faced by passengers.

“When you’ve got thousands of people arriving at Heathrow at seven o’clock in the morning, and that’s been happening for years, where you got a lot of people arriving on overnight flights, then you should gear yourself up to make sure you can handle those people,” he said.

“But of course that costs money and it costs space, and people are reluctant often to do that.”

Lord Parkinson said that airlines and airports had been urged by the government to hire more staff to