Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, the last one of the week,

bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or actually away and having the time of your life.

I'm just travelling back into London from Stansted Airport on the Stansted Express. I wanted to talk to you about,

well, if you're traveling away this weekend or indeed over the Easter holidays, then it's possible

you might face queues and snarlups at the airport. There's an awful lot of them around. We have had widespread

cancellations by British Airways, partly because of their IT failure. The most recent one was on

Wednesday afternoon, but also because there appears to be a kind of systemic lack of staffing so very difficult for them very difficult indeed

for their passengers quite a lot of cancellations going on i'm also hearing about some significant

cancellations from easy jet although i've not been able to stand that up however i wanted to

talk to you first about what happens if your flight is

abruptly cancelled. Fortunately, everything is on your side. The airline absolutely needs to look

after you and provide you with another flight as soon as possible. Now, if the airline's got another flight the same day,

then it is allowed to book you on that. But if it hasn't, and there's another way of you get into

your destination, then you must be given the opportunity to take it, whether it's a flight on

a rival airline, or if you're heading

somewhere like Paris or Brussels or Amsterdam, a Euro star train. That is absolutely enshrined in

UK law and they must do it. Now, of course, at times of chaos, that's simply not going to happen.

You've got to give the airline a chance to

rebook. You may be told if it can get through on the phone, oh, well, you're only allowed to

travel on our flights or you can only travel on our partner airlines. That is absolute

tosh. There is no legal basis for it whatsoever. So just ignore that. It's really scandalous that they should

say that and get away with it. So if they will not book you, you have to book yourself.

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