by Holidays in Spain and Portugal will be the hardest hit by the cap on Gatwick flights, experts fear.
The high volume of planned flights to the Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca and the Algarve makes it more likely that they will be scrapped to cope with the self-imposed downsizing of the airport, jeopardizing the escape plans of thousands of families.
Flights at breakfast time and on changeover days are also at the highest risk of being cancelled, as Gatwick tries to reduce the chaos at the busiest times of the day.
The airport announced Thursday that it would limit daily flights to 825 in July and 850 in August as it tries to address labor shortages.
It means that up to 4,000 flights will be cancelled.
Downing Street on Friday welcomed Gatwick’s decision “so that they can realistically deliver through the summer”, rather than impose last-minute cancellations.
Check flight schedules
The Government is encouraging all airports to review the feasibility of their flight schedules.
Until last night, however, no one had announced their intention to follow Gatwick’s example, with Manchester and Stansted signaling that they would not impose any caps.
Heathrow has already ordered airlines to cut the number of passengers flying at certain times of the day by a third this month.
The chaos is mainly due to the slow pace of rehiring airport staff, such as baggage handlers, who were laid off during Covid.
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy PC Agency, said: “It is inevitable that flights to Spain will be hit the hardest.
“It’s very frustrating for consumers. The pressure is now on Gatwick and the airlines to urgently cancel these flights because the airlines will want to reduce compensation.
“If they give more than two weeks’ notice, they don’t have to pay compensation.”
Charles said that Portugal and flights to the south of France, namely Nice and Marseille, were also high risk.
He added: “Gatwick will talk to the airlines and tell them that we have to reduce flights at the busiest times of the day.
“That is between six and nine in the morning, also on weekends, on transition days.”
‘I had a meltdown’
It came as some airports saw another day of intense queues, with passengers missing flights due to congestion.
Nicole Venglovicova, 31, missed three flights from Belfast to Heathrow and said she was worried she would not be paid a refund of around £500.
“I had a meltdown, I was crying outside the airport from the stress,” he said.
A spokesperson for No 10 said: “We want everyone to be able to travel freely and easily, so we continue to encourage the industry to increase their hiring so that they can offer enough flights for families waiting for a well-deserved holiday after the pandemic.”
fill job vacancies
Paul Scully, a business minister, has previously suggested that one solution to the airport chaos is for staff to work longer hours if they wish.
He told Sky News: “We want to work very closely with airports and airlines to make sure they are doing everything they can and see what else we can do.
“There are a record number of openings, 1.3 million openings across the country in all kinds of sectors, but there are also people who have recalibrated what they want to do when they were on leave.
“We want to make sure that those folks who aren’t necessarily working full time, through Universal Credit we can go back to work to make them more productive, if it suits them, and obviously match them with the sectors where there are those openings. .”
Asked if this meant people working longer hours, he said: “I’m not talking about forcing people to do anything, but we just want to make sure they’re properly matched so that the people who can work longer, who want work longer, you can do it.”
