The staff shortage excuse is getting extremely tiresome. If all of these airlines are short on staff, why not trim your schedule so that you don't have this kind of chaos when one tiny wrench gets thrown into the daily events. Who cares if your profits go down a bit because of it, it's better to lose profits and be reliable than it is to constantly suck at your business practices. You'll end up losing those profits over time anyway as people move to better offerings to avoid being let down over and over again.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike B.:
The staff shortage excuse is getting extremely tiresome. If all of these airlines are short on staff, why not trim your schedule so that you don't have this kind of chaos when one tiny wrench gets thrown into the daily events. Who cares if your profits go down a bit because of it, it's better to lose profits and be reliable than it is to constantly suck at your business practices. You'll end up losing those profits over time anyway as people move to better offerings to avoid being let down over and over again.

Major problems are the airports too.

Baggage handlers working from home!

Flying is probably the only thing you pay lots for and know your generally going get treated like shit, sit in dirty small seats, served crap food and have no choice of whom you sit next to and their habits and hygiene.

Plus wait about at grotty airports

This is more than just a UK problem. I just got back from a 2-week trip and had "travel chaos" problems at DFW, Heathrow, Stockholm (Arlanda), Copenhagen, and Amsterdam (Schiphol). My luggage was delayed traveling to Copenhagen and traveling back from Stockholm. I was 2nd in line this morning when Finnair opened the check-in counter (2 hours before the flight), spent 75 minutes in the security line and just made it to the gate as they started boarding. We had problems with jet bridges in both Dallas and Amsterdam, and trouble getting equipment to back the plane away from the jet bridge.

Other than the airlines, though, the trip was fantastic.

When the first school holidays start after the lifting of restrictions you can reasonably expect everyone to want to travel at once. If you are in a position to travel when the kids are at school it is more civilized.
We flew from Bristol (voted the worst airport in the UK) last week (before the holidays) on Easyjet to Marseille and back. The queues at both airports were longer than before Covid but not too bad.

I was just through Heathrow a week ago with a very tight connection 1 hour 40 minutes, Minimum time 1Hr 30Min. No problems at all. Landed T5, bus to T3, a bit of a wait at security, but not bad, and walked straight to gate and onward to my next flight.

I agree, that something needs to be done about all the BA and Easy Jet Cancellations. At least BA needs to stop listing flights for sale, that they know have already cancelled because of staff shortages, that would go a long way to solving the problem. Easy Jet, who knows.

Last year I kept delaying booking to try to accommodate a privileged Mexican client who wanted to share a charter but kept switching his dates. I got tired of waiting on him and went ahead and booked my flights, but by then all that was available was business class. So while that cost me a pretty penny, it was worth every penny. I'll never do it any other way.

Dublin was bad on June 4th (bank holiday weekend). It was so bad that after hours of clearing security and passport checks the airline just gave up and announce now boarding, with no pre-boarding for disabilities, families with children, first class or frequent flyers. They didn't announce to have your passport available with your boarding pass so half of the idiots didn't have it handy and were searching for them at the scanner. We walked down the ramp to the plane and the crew wouldn't let anyone on because the plane wasn't ready so we all stood on the ramp for another 10 minutes or so.

Lisbon was also a nightmare 2 days ago. We cleared security in 30 minutes but they have another boarding pass check after they post your gate number that took an additional hour. They don't post your gate number until an hour before you board.

TAP Air Portugal was as disorganized as any airline that I've ever flown on.

I wouldn’t disagree with title of this thread at all. We are now run by one of idiotic buffoons in history.

We had built an economy that allowed free and open trade with one of the wealthiest regions in the world and we could travel, work and trade with no barriers whatsoever.

And instead we allowed a bunch of incompetents to take away all those freedoms in the name of sovereignty.

Biggest problem with our airlines is they use staff from all over Europe and switch them in and out till fill the gaps. Thanks to our government the airlines can’t use those staff now to work from their UK hubs.

Our economy grew to a size where we need good skilled people of all ages and we needed the freedom of movement to allow those easy access to come and go. Now it takes months for them to get a work visa.

Or to put it another way. New York has thousands working who cone in for the day, week, months or years from the rest of the US. We have now effectively closed the border so that now those workers cannot come, have to pay thousands for work visas, and have minimal job security - so why bother. Oh and you need a PhD to even apply. It’s a complete fucking shambles.

And yet if we complain or point this out we are told we are being unpatriotic.

Here is a pretty good summation of the state of affairs in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...growth-bites-economy

Travel chaos is irritating for holiday makers. It is utterly terminal for business, whether you are an employee trying to get to work, or if you wanting to go and visit clients, customers, suppliers or potential ones. From Edinburgh or London most other European centres were a simple day trip. Now is at least a overnight or three day affair to get the same contact time. And its a lottery if you are able to get there or get back. Many are simply not bothering.