Abta chief executive Mark Tanzer said any public criticism of any part of the supply chain "didn’t help with consumer confidence". "Whatever issues there are, we’re better sorting those out as an industry among ourselves rather than having a blame game for who’s responsible," said Tanzer.

"Within the industry, open communications up and down the line really do help. If agents aren’t getting information from tour operators, tour operators not from airlines and so on, that all adds to the problem for the consumer."

Tanzer said one lesson travel must learn from the Covid crisis is the importance of smooth flows of information to ensure people are given timely explanations when there is disruption. "One of the laws of queuing theory is that an unexplained wait is a lot longer than an explained wait and an anxious wait is a lot longer," said Tanzer.

"If you can take the anxiety out by giving longer notice so people are not worrying about missing a connection and so forth, that dampens down the impact on customers – which is really where all of ours focus should be.

Airlines UK chief executive Tim Alderslade, who echoed Tanzer’s comments, said as the "primary customer facing" part of the travel eco-system, along with the UK’s airports, airlines were used to bearing the brunt of consumers’ disproval.

"I don’t blame customers who have been dragged into this one iota [for how they feel or react], it must be an incredibly difficult experience," he said. "I agree with Mark around the importance of the sector being united, I don’t think some of the criticism we’ve seen over the past few weeks, of all parts of the sector, is particularly helpful.

"If you’re the customer, you just want this sorted out. Ultimately, you don’t care who is to blame. We’ve seen comments from some airports about the handling agents, I just don’t think it’s particularly helpful. And neither is it to blame the government. We are where we are, we can’t turn the clock back to furlough or the decisions that were taken during Covid."

Alderslade said travel had to come to terms with being one eco-system. "We’re actually working behind the scenes very very well together, including with ministers," he continued.

"And we’ve made some progress. Compared to where we were during the half-term period, while the government’s 22-point plan was much maligned, there was some really good stuff in there – particularly the slot amnesty. I think we need to continue collaborating and engaging, and see where we are as we move forward into the bulk of the summer flying programme.

"In the vast majority of cases, the experience has stabilised. It’s not as bad as the media is portraying it, we just need to keep that collaboration moving forward because we just can’t get into a ’he said, she said’ blame game. Consumers just don’t want to hear it."

’We didn’t have crystal balls’

Airport Operators Association chief executive Karen Dee said like airlines, airports were used to getting the blame for this beyond their control such as Border Force issues – but reiterated the customer simply" doesn’t care who does what". "We need to ensure the whole eco-system works together," said Dee.

"If you go back to what are the lessons learned, this was a pandemic – we can criticise government if we thought they should have done things differently, and certainly we will say that to them, but they didn’t know either. We have all been dealing with something we hope will not occur again.

"Yes, there are lessons we can learn about collaboration and planning. But we were trying to plan for something we just didn’t know. We didn’t have crystal balls. Now we’re getting a better feel. We’re in a much better place and we can offer a better service.

"I share everyone’s frustration – the situation is not as bad as the media likes to present it, and I think while it makes a good story, it actually doesn’t help with passengers. It increases anxiety, it drives odd behaviours that actually make the situation worse.

"It’s very difficult for us try and put out positive messages because they’re not as attractive a story. But I think as long as the industry is continuing to work together to make things better then fingers crossed we will see continued improvements across the summer and beyond."