Suffolk Travel agent says more communication needed over flight cancelations
Recent flight cancellations have caused chaos for those trying to go on holiday
A Suffolk Travel agent has been speaking to us about the recent cancellations to flights across the country.
It comes after more flights were cancelled at Heathrow this week and Easyjet's confirmed it's going to be cutting hundreds more over the summer due to staff shortages.
Andrea Powell, owner of Idelo Travel in Ipswich, told us the reason behind all of this, is due to Covid.
She said she recognises the importance of furlough, however when it stopped, other industries like hospitality, were able to bounce back.
But because travel was still closed, the travel industry couldn't, and so they had to figure out a way to keep businesses going in the months where they had little to no business.
And for many of these companies, redundancies were the only option.
Not only this, but many members of staff that were made redundant, have found alternative jobs and will not be coming back.
She told us companies worked with the information they had at the time: "Some of that, I think could and should have been mitigated.
"I think that the industry was then very arrogant in some ways in expecting to be able to click its fingers and everyone ran back.
"I don't think necessarily some of the planning was done early enough.
"But equally without the certainty from government to plan 3-6 months ahead, companies are not going to take on willingly and huge amount of cost when they have incurred such losses in the last two years."
Andrea said although Travel may seem simple, there is so much that goes into it.
"Travel is very simple. But travel is inherently complex as well.
"Hence why people that go and book their own holidays, if everything goes right holidays are simple.
"You just put your money in 10 minutes later you've booked and paid for your holiday.
"You turn up at the airport, it goes and everything works fine.
"When it doesn't, then it's not fine because underneath all that simplicity is actually a very complex process.
"I suppose, and what we're seeing at the moment, I think is the elastic band is stretched too far.
"Which means these processes one by one are breaking down.
"Hence why we're talking about so many different ways in which things are going wrong.
"Because actually, when you think about it, it's all those things coming together that make it happen perfectly."
She said tour operators have a duty to their customers when things go wrong.
"If somebody's flight is cancelled, then the tour operator has a duty to provide them with a reasonable alternative.
"If they can't provide them with what they consider the reasonable alternative, they have to provide them with a refund."
She told us what upsets her, is the lack of communication the customers are receiving.
"I think that the one thing it that is terrible is that customers have not had adequate communication.
"And I mean, I mean also brazen in it out in person because you're not telling me there isn't somebody that could go down from a head office and sit there in that airport and tell those passengers what's happening on their flights and on their holiday.
"And that for me is is what's unacceptable about it all."
These cancellations have also affected her business: "It does affect us in how we're booking people going forward.
"People see the headlines with the tour operators that are proving less reliable in this instance and one of the things we're explaining to customers is basically the choices that they have."