Friday 10 June 2022 04:19 PM UK airport chaos: Aviation expert suggests Britons should consider cancelling ... trends now

British tourists who have only paid a deposit for their holiday should consider cancelling now to avoid facing a massive bill to get home if their flights are cancelled amid the airport chaos, an aviation expert claimed today.

UK holidaymakers heading abroad endured further long queues again today as others were warned strike action across Europe threatens to wreak more havoc on summer getaways amid fears the situation could get worse.

And aviation expert Julian Bray told MailOnline this afternoon that those who have only paid a deposit of about 10 per cent should consider cancelling now 'because you have no guarantee of an outward flight or a return flight'.

He gave an example of a family of four who become stuck in the Canary Islands with no available seats on flights for days and could therefore face a £4,000 bill to get home to the UK via ferry, rail and possibly more flights.

Mr Bray said: 'If you just paid a deposit and its usually about 10 per cent, it's worth considering cancelling your holiday at the moment because you have no guarantee of an outward flight or a return flight - or if your return flight is delayed or cancelled and you need to be put up in a hotel. If you're on the Canary Islands, it's a problem. 

'If you're a family of four as a capital sum that could be £3,000 to £4,000. If you then have to pay for return transit, which would be a ferry to the mainland, possible train, possible new flights - then all the baggage to contend with.

'I don't say everybody should do it, but they should consider. If you've got a spare £2,000 or £3,000 that you can take as emergency money so you've got the wherewithal to get back, you might take a different view on it.'

He said airlines were struggling to move people from cancelled flights onto other planes because booking levels were so high - and that previous policies of overbooking by 10 per cent because there were normally 20 per cent no-shows were now redundant post-Covid, because 'everybody wants to get away and nobody is cancelling'.

Mr Bray also warned that there were 60,000 job vacancies to be filled in the industry, and a backlog of three to six months of potential workers going through the vetting procedure which they require before starting training.

He advised people consider cancelling 'up to Christmas because the delay in getting clearance for people is three to six months which means that the training starts after that, which means you're still not going to be up to speed'.

Meanwhile easyJet pilots have accused the 'chaotic' airline of cancelling viable flights over the half-term holidays after 'foolish' bosses thought they could operate despite making hundreds of staff redundant in the pandemic.

Pilots from France working for the Luton-based company warned of the 'frightening prospect' of even worse disruption this summer as fears build that customers will stop using the airline after being put off by the chaos.

Workers from the French SNPL pilot union also accused easyJet officials of failing to act on warnings that the firm could not cope with demand after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted amid 'operational meltdowns'. They also said there 'seems to be a curse on easyJet top management, bound to become penny wise and pound foolish'.

The letter, written to easyJet's Swedish chief executive Johan Lundgren, accused executives of being 'fooled' into believing they could put on a summer schedule despite 'less flight crew, cabin crew or flight planning officers'.

EasyJet cut 1,400 UK jobs in the first ten months of the pandemic up to January 2021, having initially warned shortly after the Covid-19 crisis began that up to 4,500 members of its 15,000 workforce could lose their jobs. The airline's pre-tax losses over the six months to March were revealed last month to have hit £557million.

Meanwhile unions representing Ryanair crew in Spain said they had 'no option' but to call for a walk-out after the carrier abandoned pay talks. The move raises the prospect of more misery for travellers, many of whom are still stuck at holiday destinations after their flights home were cancelled following half-term flight chaos. 

According to the i newspaper, the French pilots said in their letter: 'Literally hundreds of employees in distress have fed back how chaotic our operations have become recently, to unprecedented levels… We are actually convinced that our disruption hasn't even peaked yet and frankly this is a frightening prospect.'

They claimed there were dozens of 'red cancellations' just minutes before departure, and some early flights were cancelled at the last-minute despite easyJet bosses knowing the night before that no crew were available.

EasyJet, which about 550 French-based pilots, said it would respond directly to the SNPL - and a spokesman told the i: 'Delivering a safe and reliable operation for our customers and crew is the airline's highest priority. EasyJet continues to operate up to around 1,700 flights and carry around a quarter of a million customers every day.