June 20th - Is Brexit at all responsible for our air travel misery?

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Depending on who you speak with, Brexit is either the sole reason for our current air travel chaos as airlines and airports struggle to fill the gaps in employment numbers or, according to some government ministers, not an issue at all. I think it's somewhere in between - and here's my reasoning why. While air travel is struggling to cope with demand across the world as we've hurried back to international travel, it is also true that Britain is experiencing some more stresses than other countries in airports and with air fleets based here. So, although not all the problems can be squared on Brexit, the government's attempt to make it happen aren't helping matters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the first independent travel podcast of the week with me Simon Calder.
0:08.0	You're very welcome to join me. I'm at Wood Lane Underground Station in West London.
0:16.0	Now, train, that's I think the third one, which just come in on the opposite side of the tracks um
0:25.2	i've just heard an announcement which says that the uh there's a good service operating on this and all
0:32.1	other underground lines that will come as a surprise to those of us who've been waiting for, I'd say,
0:39.4	10 minutes for an eastbound train, but there we are. People have their own standards about
0:45.7	what's reliable and what's not. So if a train does come in before I finish, I will ask you to
0:53.0	join me on board. but I need to talk about
0:56.7	Brexit because there's a huge amount of controversy about the degree if any to which
1:05.1	Brexit is responsible for the current flight chaos and just to depict that flight chaos for you, as that train disappears, no doubt to be followed by another one going in the same direction. Let me just flat out where we are. So I flew into Heathrow yesterday. There was a delay before departure because they couldn't find anyone to dispatch the aircraft.
1:28.0	There was a day on arrival.
1:29.2	They couldn't find anyone to welcome the aircraft in a technical sense.
1:37.3	I explored the great baggage mountain of Heathrow.
1:40.9	I then learned that Heathrow is culling 90 flights today, 10% of the schedule in and out
1:47.8	of Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 because of some problems there. Ladies and gentlemen, the shock
1:56.3	news is that there is a train just approaching because you can never tell whether or not you will get another one.
2:05.1	I am going to try to board it, so forgive me while this happens and we'll see.
2:11.6	That's come as a big surprise to all of us.
2:15.4	Hang on.
2:16.8	Well, there we are. I think I've successfully negotiated my way on board, which is good.
2:22.5	So let me see if I can carry on talking to you about Brexit. Always a tricky subject.
2:29.8	So we know that the UK government does not accept that Brexit is at all responsible for the current situation.
	...

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