Airport chaos that has ruined half-term breaks for thousands of families could last until NEXT YEAR, holidaymakers were warned tonight.
The message from the boss of Britain’s biggest union, Unite, will spell misery for millions who haven’t had a getaway since the pandemic started in 2020.
And it will be cold comfort for the passengers who this week faced huge queues to check in or collect baggage and waited hours for flights to take off or had their trips cancelled altogether.
Today some were hit with more travel hell as they tried to fly home – and experts predicted the chaos could be even worse tomorrow as thousands more return from their breaks.
Unite’s Sharon Graham blamed the shambles on the Government for failing to attach job guarantees to the £8billion in furlough wages it gave to airlines.
And she accused the airlines of “greed and lack of foresight” after they laid off more than 60,000 staff during the Covid crisis and are now struggling to find people willing to work for them.
Many highly-trained staff, jettisoned after decades of service, have now found better paid jobs without the long hours.
Ms Graham said: “Airlines assumed, wrongly, that people who had either been made redundant or got out of the industry would come back on a pittance pay. That’s not going to happen.
“There is now a chronic shortage of staff and I can’t see how it’s going to change by July. If they don’t get their act together, this chaos could go on until next year.
“Families who have saved up for their first holiday in three years are sleeping on airport floors, when they thought they’d be on the beach somewhere, purely and simply because there was corporate greed and lack of foresight about what was going to happen when you lost 60,000 jobs.”
Around 400 flights have been delayed or cancelled in the past week. The airlines want Brexit rules relaxed so they can hire foreign staff.
Ministers say job market pressures do not excuse poor planning and accuse operators of overselling trips they could not deliver.
But while they were still arguing, holidaymakers faced more disruption today. EasyJet cancelled at least 40 flights to and from Gatwick, affecting around 7,000 passengers.
Tui customers complained of three-hour delays at baggage reclaim when they landed in Manchester at 3am.
Meanwhile Border Force officials are standing by for a huge surge of families flying home today. Flight analyst Cirium said nearly 11,000 planes, with 1.9m seats, will have landed at UK airports by tomorrow night.
Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration Service Union, said queuing was “inevitable” and could last for hours.
Some experts blame the current crisis on airlines for taking too long to start hiring staff. Travel agent Richard Slater, of Macclesfield-based agency Henbury Travel, said: “Jet2 took a punt on it and got their people ready to start in April and May.
“But other airlines, like Tui and easyJet, sat on their hands and worried about whether they were going to be in lockdown forever.
“By the time they started recruiting in January, February and March they had missed the boat.”
Mr Slater, northwest spokesman for the Association of British Travel Agents, also urged the Government to speed up the background checks run by civil servants on new airport staff.
Paul Charles of the PC Consultancy hit back at the Government’s “outrageous” claims that the chaos could have been avoided if airlines had started recruiting earlier.
He said: “The Government delayed the opening of the industry due to the omicron variant. They didn’t offer any new furlough scheme, yet still closed down the industry in December.
“So there is no reason why airlines should have hired more people at that time. They could only start hiring again from March, when borders opened up further. And it takes three months to get people in position.”
He added airports would start to reduce the number of flights departing each day this month and warned: “That means there will be more cancellations in June.”
Travellers could be hit with yet more problems later this summer.
Unite and the GMB union are balloting 500 British Airway check-in staff over strike action in a row over pay.
Staff at Heathrow took a 10% pay cut during the pandemic and are now demanding their full salaries are reinstated.
Without check-in staff, most flights could be grounded.
Ms Graham said: “Nobody wants to go on strike, but it’s difficult to see what else they can do when their pay has been cut in this way.
“What the Government has to do in the future is ensure investment comes with job guarantees. This is taxpayers’ money.
“And it’s the same taxpayers sitting on airport floors with their children because their flights have been cancelled.”
Away from the airports there are problems on the railways this weekend because of a strike by TransPennine Express conductors in a dispute over pay. A limited service is running but passengers are being urged to avoid travel if possible.
And tomorrow 4,000 Tube staff are due to start a 24-hour strike in London in a row over job losses and pensions.
