June 7th - Flight cancellation crisis continues after bank holiday
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2022
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With half-term hostilities over, I fondly imagine the airlines would have a chance to get everyone home who was caught up in the hundreds of short-notice flight cancellations over the bank holiday weekend, and regroup to face the summer ahead.
Instead, by Tuesday the cancellation crisis was getting even worse – with at least 60 UK flights grounded by easyJet alone, leaving an estimated 10,000 people out of position. My thoughts on the summer ahead.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Corder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on great escapes. |
| 0:10.1 | Well, if you are going to get one, today I'm going to pick up from texts that a friend very kindly sent me, which caused me some considerable concern. This is basically about the |
| 0:22.8 | half-term hostilities at the airports and one of the airlines being over, at which point |
| 0:30.4 | I had speculated, you might have heard me, saying that, well, the airlines would have a chance |
| 0:35.5 | to get everybody home who's caught up in all the flight cancellations over the bank holiday weekend. |
| 0:41.6 | They could reassess and they would be able to face the summer with renewed hope. |
| 0:48.4 | Well, here we are Tuesday, the 7th of June, and by 11sies I'd toss it up 60-60 cancellations on EasyJet alone, mostly from Gatwick but also from Luton, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow. |
| 1:06.9 | And that represents about 10,000 passengers who are today booked with EasyJet and not getting where they need to be. |
| 1:19.8 | And just as I was doing this, I could have text from a friend saying trying to book a flight to Athens for July as Jet 2 direct from Birmingham. |
| 1:30.1 | Too risky? Should I play it safe? Go with Luftanser via Frankfurt? |
| 1:35.8 | Well, most definitely to answer the question directly, as I did, no. Jet 2 have, with the odd exception, a bit of a long delay, very, very occasional |
| 1:47.7 | cancellation. They've got everything right as has, by the way, Ryan here. But that message |
| 1:54.8 | sums up the damage that's being done to the reputation of the UK aviation industry, as well as passengers' confidence. |
| 2:05.6 | And so, well, it seems a very banal thing to say, but this cannot go on. |
| 2:12.6 | Let's get it in perspective, it being the high number of flight cancellations that we are seeing, |
| 2:20.0 | it's roughly perhaps 3% of UK aviation. So 97% of the time people are getting away and reaching |
| 2:29.8 | their destination and getting home. And if you get a 90 minute delay as I had last week I was just |
| 2:35.3 | kind of bar for the course of merit that as being worthy of mention but if you're in the 3% |
| 2:43.8 | who are being cancelled that is very serious news indeed it's going to be stressful it's going |
| 2:49.8 | to be expensive although you're probably going to be able to claim it back it's going to be stressful. It's going to be expensive, although you're probably |
| 2:51.4 | going to be able to claim it back. It's going to be upsetting. So, and it's going to undermine |
| 2:58.3 | passenger confidence in flights. And the fact that a friend who I know is a highly intelligent |
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