The warnings came during a hearing of parliament’s transport committee on Wednesday (12 October), convened to explore the causes of the travel disruption that has blighted the sector’s emergence from the pandemic this year.

Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover, told MPs the port would likely face more delays and disruption when the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (ESS) is introduced next May.

The system would require non-EU passport holders to present biometric registration linked to their passport at the port, which Bannister warned could increase the average time for a car to pass through border security from one minute to more than 10.

"We haven’t received any information as what the exact technology at the port will be," he said. "We’ve heard the technology could be an iPad with hand holds to register fingerprints, but we haven’t run a trial on it.

"We’ve heard there may be a transition period for the new protocols, which would be welcomed by us, depending on what that it is of course. If it comes in the worst possible way – in the way we fear it is going to – it will cause significant and continued disruption for a very long time."

Bannister urged the government to focus its attention on the ESS. "As it stands, we do not have a solution that will work in a very busy ferry terminal," he warned.

"We need to know what the rules of the game are, and we need to see what the technology is going to be like. We need a sufficient amount of time to trial, test and train to ensure that technology works effectively before implementation."

ATC squeeze

The committee also quizzed aviation bosses on airport and airline disruption, as well as their plans to quell any further delays from arising ahead of the October half-term and summer 2023.

Lisa Tremble, chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer for British Airways, said the airline was "confident" there is the "resilience in the system" to avoid a repeat of the problems the carrier has recently faced.

"We reduced our summer schedule by 13% to give our customers advance notice that the Heathrow cap is in place until the end of October, so we are confident we can run our schedule as planned over that period," she added.

Meanwhile, Sophie Dekkers, chief commercial officer for easyJet, said the carrier is looking at its summer 2023 schedule to prepare for further air traffic control delays if the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues.

"We can assume the squeeze on air traffic outside of eastern European airspace will not change anytime soon, so we need to prepare for the fact further ATC delays on route are going to be a bigger impact," she said.

Despite the concerns, the airline is seeing customer confidence return "in strong demand". "We have taken action to build the extra resilience for the operation and daily operations have been normal for some time now, in fact at better levels than in 2019, with on the day cancellations at 0.8% on average since the beginning of July," a spokesperson said.

Gatwick chief executive Stephen Wingate provided the committee with an update on the airport’s application to bring its existing standby runway into routine use.

"We are in the final few months of finalising the proposals and applications, which we expect to launch with the planning inspectorate by Q1 next year," he said.

"We hope we can make a case and our environmental litigations stand the test of time, and we get the approval to routinely use the standby runway in the future."