It’s time. The summer holidays are upon us and that sunshine jaunt booked back in January is suddenly imminent. But as the first travel chaos stories of the season start to pepper the headlines – a power cut here, a baggage meltdown there – clouds of anxiety can gather over daydreams of beach bliss.
In the post-pandemic rush to head overseas, the air and travel industry uncovered ever more new things to go wrong. In 2022 came the realisation that there were simply not enough staff for the flights sold to take cooped-up Brits briefly off the island. Then last summer culminated in an unprecedented air traffic meltdown affecting tens of thousands of passengers.
But the appetite for travel continues unabated: Stansted and Manchester airports had record numbers in June, while Heathrow saw its busiest ever day on 30 June. As ever more flights crowd into the airspace, and airlines sweat their assets with swift turnarounds and relentless activity, the potential for knock-on cancellations and delays is vast.
As the lottery people like to say, “it could be you”, and indeed, it could: it’s more likely you will be stranded in a foreign airport or mysteriously sans baggage than win a pile of cash. Gratifyingly, the odds are still small. So how is 2024 shaping up – and what can airlines, or the nervous traveller, do to further minimise the risks?
Extreme weather has been arguably the biggest headache for the travel industry so far, disrupting flights and threatening to blight summers one way or another, through foreign heatwave hell, staycation high water or an alarmingly early start to the hurricane season.
That may have contributed to the rise in late bookings reported by the holiday firm Jet2, as people assess the alternatives. The extreme heat that affected much of southern Europe did not appear to deter bookings last year, according to easyJet. Even late summer wildfires in Rhodes and the warnings for tourists amid Greece’s 40C June heat are still pitted against the unusually wet and cold British summer.
While holidaymakers may find something tolerable in between, the weather has been increasing disruption to flights. Between the peaks and troughs, summer storms are a growing issue with almost 48% more delays in Europe attributed to adverse weather in 2023 than in 2022, according to the Brussels air traffic organisation Eurocontrol.
British Airways was among those making cancellations two weekends ago, with rerouting due to storms in which two of their planes were struck by lightning. Wet weather on returns home also has an impact: air traffic controllers increase the gaps between planes to ensure safe landings, limiting the number that can fly back in.
Air traffic control more broadly has become a vexed issue for airlines, with strikes abroad and more recent troubles from staff shortages at Gatwick’s tower. Most ill-timed and inexplicable was a gremlin in the UK’s air traffic control system that halted flights for hours last August bank holiday: due either to a “black swan event”, according to those responsible at Nats (national air traffic services), or “engineers sitting at home in their jimmy-jams”, according to Ryanair’s furious boss, Michael O’Leary.
Either way, Nats has worked to ensure that combination of events should never recur, while Gatwick said Nats had “successfully increased the number of controllers and assured us there will be the required resources to deliver this year’s busy summer schedules”.
Staff shortages in multiple areas of aviation was the overwhelming story of 2022’s troubled summer, as airports and airlines struggled to recruit enough security line workers and baggage handlers in particular.
Manchester airport was the scene of some of the worst queues, and there was trouble at Heathrow and elsewhere with passengers also held in long security and check-in delays. EasyJet and BA were among those forced to cancel thousands of flights in advance to try to pre-empt disruption.
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Extensive recruitment has filled those gaps. A Heathrow spokesperson said: “We’re fully staffed and as prepared as we can be.” And airport bosses stress that many of those raw recruits are now fully trained with a year’s experience behind them: Manchester airport last month saw 97% of passengers through security in less than 15 minutes, despite a power cut that meant a day of delay and cancellations.
The last two years have also seen a rise in aviation strikes – with everyone from firefighters to refuellers seeking to follow overworked frontline staff in boosting low pay during the cost of living crisis. Recent disputes involving some workers at Gatwick, and Aer Lingus pilots, have for now been resolved.
The impact for travellers has frequently been lower than threatened – even Border Force strikes last year delayed few people. But passengers can be cheered by the news that some of the most unpredictable and disruptive strikes, the dreaded wildcat actions by French air traffic controllers, have been rendered unlikely this summer due to a generous pre-Paris Olympics settlement.
The Olympics have also ensured that the EU has delayed its entry-exit system until at least October – now a headache for another summer, particularly on the ground for the Port of Dover and Eurostar, both making extensive preparations. Dover nonetheless has warned travellers to expect “exceptionally busy” summer weekends this year due to the Olympics increasing traffic by up to 30%, leading to a two-hour processing time for ferries.
Back at the airports, hopes are high for a smoother year. Aviation insiders maintain that a number of lurid headlines are overblown. Referring to a recent story depicting alleged chaos, one exasperated executive said: “That’s a picture of an orderly queue. That’s what an airport looks like.”
And the stories can be self-fulfilling: during the staffing troubles of 2022, many holidaymakers took to arriving even earlier, filling terminals long before check-ins opened.
As a source at a major carrier put it: “We’ve had a few difficult weekends. When things happens at the last minute it’s not predictable … There are lots of different challenging external factors. We’re always going to have things beyond our control.”
To try to mitigate disruption, easyJet and BA have made large investments in their control centres at Luton and Heathrow to provide quicker and swifter responses to events. More automation and AI is being used to assess the availability of crew and planes to swiftly resolve the complex permutations of who and what can be reallocated, where, as need arises.
Even if a new source of travel chaos is surely waiting in the wings, the industry is confident it is in a better place. Tim Alderslade, the chief executive of Airlines UK, said: “The summer season has got off to a positive start and, notwithstanding recent adverse weather and air traffic control challenges across Europe, airlines are looking forward to another busy summer taking millions of customers away on their holidays.”
Another airline director urged: “Just make sure they buy travel insurance.”