The BRITS have been warned the travel baggage chaos could go on for MONTHS as bags pile up at Gatwick Airport today.
Suitcases were today abandoned by travelers returning to Sussex Airport after waiting for them for over an hour.
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Families desperate for a summer holiday faced travel chaos over the weekend with massive queues at airports and to board ferries from Dover.
And it’s feared the nightmare is just beginning with the chaos and confusion over luggage clinging to UK airports on the first summer holiday since 2019 unhindered by Covid restrictions.
It is also the first unrestricted summer since Swissport, the company that provides baggage handlers and check-in staff at some of the country’s busiest airports, announced it was cutting its workforce in the UK by nearly half. United.
The company blamed the economic impact of the pandemic, saying it was worse for the aviation industry than the crash of 2008 or the volcanic ash cloud of 2010.
Even the offer of £35 an hour for new baggage handlers has failed to reduce the backlog.
Staff shortages have led to a backlog of bags at Gatwick and long queues at other busy airports such as Stanstead and Bristol.
Passengers in Scotland were warned earlier this month that baggage delays could continue for months due to a shortage of baggage handlers.
As bags pile up at airports, cars are stuck in queues stretching for miles at south coast seaports as thousands of families try to get to Europe for a holiday well deserved summer.
Queues of up to 30 hours for ferries have been reported, as Folkestone was dubbed Britain’s ‘holiday hell hotspot’.
Travel experts have warned that delays are likely to get worse before they get better.
Speaking to the Common’s business, energy and industrial strategy committee, a union representative pointed the finger at aerospace companies.
Oliver Richardson, Unite National Officer for Civil Air Transport, said there was a ‘correlation’ between the airlines that canceled large numbers of flights this summer and those that made significant job cuts these last years.
“For example, Ryanair was very clear, we negotiated an agreement with them, the basis of the agreement was the absence of redundancies.
“So they’re in a different position to British Airways, which was made redundant and rehired.”
British Airways and Easyjet have canceled the most flights and also top the list of redundancies, with 10,000 and 2,000 respectively.
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