Simple answer: staff shortage. But why?
The airline is struggling to hire replacements for the thousands of workers it laid off during the pandemic.
Before Covid, airports and airlines across the UK employed around 140,000 people, but since then thousands of jobs have been cut, including around 30,000 for British airlines alone.
As demand for flights has returned, the industry is “overwhelmed,” said Paul Charles, chief executive of travel agency The PC Agency and former director of Virgin Atlantic.
He says pandemic travel restrictions have created the problem, and without certainty when the rules will be eased, the industry has not been able to hire more staff.
But the transport secretary said airlines and operators had “seriously resold flights and holidays”.
Airlines UK said the sector “has only a matter of weeks to recover and prepare for one of the busiest summers we have seen in many years”.
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