Recent well-documented staffing shortages have seen airlines make swingeing changes to their schedules, with British Airways and easyJet among those freely admitting that they have had to pre-emptively cancel some flights as a result, often running to dozens a day.

The issue was flagged by a number of agents in TTG’s latest Travel Agent Tracker survey, covering trading in April, with some agents claiming they’ve had to hire additional staff or work longer hours just to keep up with the fresh wave of admin – in many cases for trips booked prior to the pandemic.

TTG spoke to several agents about the issue, with some reporting going from three or four such amendments or cancellations a week pre-pandemic to three or four a day. Simon Waldron from Travelserv said he was having issues with Ryanair cancelling flights at the last minute when it became clear the budget carrier would not be able to fill them.

“We had one client who was flying to France via Stansted," said Waldron. "She had everything booked, including the hotel in France, and then Ryanair cancelled their flight into Stansted. So you then have to change both the flights and the hotel booking. This isn’t an isolated incident."

Waldron said airlines were not always considerate of less IT-literate passengers, for whom last-minute changes could leave them stranded, and put the issues down to airlines looking to recuperate funds following the pandemic.

He estimated schedule changes and cancellations were affecting around 5% of his clients, remarking you didn’t need big numbers to create a lot of extra work. He added that, in his belief, it would take until 2023 for the industry to fully recover the necessary levels of staffing to avoid such problems.

Lisa Russell, who runs Wanderluxe by Lisa, said she was coming into multiple schedule changes every day. “It’s not just the flights the changes affect," she said. "It’s the parking and lounges too – it’s as bad as having to cancel the whole package and start again in some cases."

Russell said prior to the pandemic, she would only have three or four changes a week, but now they were a daily occurrence. She estimated that for bookings made in the past eight to 12 months, about half had since been affected by schedule changes.

Ruth de Avila, who runs Blue Skies and Sunnies and is a Holidaysplease homeworker, said she had taken on an extra pair of hands to help check bookings owing to the amount of extra work created by having to double-check schedules.

“Every time there is a schedule change, it’s a least two hours until you’ve sorted everything,” she told TTG. De Avila added the airlines needed to take “a little more responsibility” for the amount of “grief” being caused for the trade by last-minute changes.

Freddy Magdalani from Ocean Map said April 2022 had been “chaotic”. “Some clients are part of pre-booked tours that don’t have enough room to move the arrival day back and forth, and sometimes you can’t get a replacement for the cancelled flight on the same day,” he said.

Magdalani estimated that over the past couple of months, two to three dozen of his clients had been affected by flight schedule changes and cancellations, mainly those flying with British Airways. Last month, BA said it has "slightly reduced" its schedule through to the end of May "as a precaution".

‘Bumpy year’

Jeanne Lally, joint managing director at Travel Bureau Gosforth, said her agency had experienced a lot of flight cancellations, and that it was now “common practice to come in and find flights changed”. “It elongates the booking process, makes it more complex, and undermines customer confidence,” she told TTG.

Lally said the changes affected the agency’s ability to reassure customers and make sure they were comfortable when they travelled, something she described as “an essential part” of the process. “You want customers to book and be confident it’s going to happen – they’re nervous anyway,” she said.

“The problem is industry wide, so there must be multiple issues causing this to happen. It’s not isolated to one route or departure point, it’s nationwide.”

Lally added Travel Bureau was braced for a “bumpy year” as the industry emerges from the pandemic. “We expected issues, and we just have to deal with them. There will be some semblance of normalcy by the end of the year, but then again, what’s normal in travel?”