Sue Davies, head of consumer rights at Which? said there were serious, historic, failures over the issue of compliance over passenger rights and compensation which were continuing during the mass disruption of recent weeks. Speaking at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee Davis said: “We're still seeing airlines appearing to book flights, when they don't know for sure that those flights are actually going to be able to go.We've seen people given information at very short notice and haven't really been given proper information about their rights.We feel that obviously there's some really specific issues at the moment in this case, but this is just symptomatic of some of the issues that we've seen in the industry for a long time. - There's just blatant flouting of consumer rights and a failure to put passenger interests first."
Davis also hit out at Civil Aviation Authority claiming powerless in bringing airlines to account for their treatment of passengers, regardless of the regulations.
Civil Aviation Authority boss Richard Moriarty, told the committee that he estimates between 2% and 4% of UK flights were cancelled over the half-term/Jubilee celebration week, whereas historically, cancellations run at about 1% at that time of year. The amount of cancellations was “clearly distressing, and clearly unacceptable” he said.
Many airlines and airports are blaming the government for the travel disruption, with some commenting publicly that they were forced to sack loads of staff during the pandemic and had found it difficult to reengage employees. Yet, the aviation industry, particularly in the UK was one of the most highly assisted industries by the government during the pandemic, with billions being spent on furlough, loans and other financial support and benefits.
However, Oliver Richardson from the union Unite, said the aviation industry was way too fast in sacking staff while many experienced personnel had taken advantage of offers to leave during the pandemic as some of the packages on offer were way more attractive.
Industry insiders had said that some airlines tried to capitalise on the relaxation of travel restrictions and borders being reopened by scheduling as many flights as possible without having the ability to fulfil them. Some airlines published schedules knowing full well they didn’t have the crew to staff them and, in some cases, enough aircraft out of storage to make the schedule viable in the first place. Another contributory factor has been delays in new staff getting security clearance and existing staff having to complete refresher training.
Many staff from airports and airlines took other work during the pandemic and found that these positions were better paid and conditions far superior than those on offer in the aviation industry and decided not to return.
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