Jet2 boss blames ‘woefully ill-prepared’ airports for travel chaos

The holiday firm said passengers had to endure a poor experience, with flight delays and cancellations

Bosses say the travel group has been ‘directly impacted’ by disruption caused by airports and suppliers (PA)

Jet2’s chairman has criticised airports for being “woefully ill-prepared” and “poorly resourced”, causing “inexcusable” disruption for its passengers.

Philip Meeson, executive chairman of the travel group, said customers had to endure a “very much poorer experience” due to the chaos caused by airports and suppliers, and had to deal with flight delays, cancellations, long queues, baggage handling problems and a lack of onboard catering supplies.

He said: “Most of our 10 UK base airports have been woefully ill-prepared and poorly resourced for the volume of customers they could reasonably expect, as have other suppliers, such as onboard caterers and providers of airport PRM (Passengers with Reduced Mobility) services.

“Inexcusable, bearing in mind our flights have been on sale for many months and our load factors are quite normal.”

Mr Meeson added: “This difficult return to normal operations has occurred simply because of the lack of planning, preparedness and unwillingness to invest by many airports and associated suppliers.”

Jet2 has also said that it has been “directly impacted” by the disruption, warning that the company’s current year performance will depend on how quickly the aviation sector “returns to some level of stability”, as well as the number of bookings for the rest of the summer and financial year.

The holiday firm reported operating losses narrowed to £323.9m for the year to 31 March against £336.1m the previous year. Statutory pre-tax losses widened to £388.8m from £341.3m.

The comments come just after the Prime Minister called for passengers to be better protected against “abuse” from airlines.

Speaking in front of the Liaison Committee on Wednesday, Boris Johnson was asked a series of travel-related questions, including why more had not been done to stop airlines selling more flights than they had capacity to operate.

Mr Johnson responded: “The airlines should not be abusing passengers in the way that they have been and I think that there should be greater protections.

“The experience of the public has been pretty wretched and they need to do much, much better.”