A consumer rights expert has accused airlines of presiding over a ‘blatant flouting of consumer rights’ following the recent flight chaos which threatens to continue into the core summer holiday season..

Sue Davies, head of consumer rights at consumer group Which?, told the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee (BEIS) committee of MPs there were serious, historic, failures over the issue of compliance with passenger rights and compensation and the regulator had proved useless in holding them to account.

She was speaking as the committee conducted a hearing over the recent bout of flight cancellations during the half-term break – many of them at very short notice – as airlines and airports grapple with staff shortages.

There were widespread queues at airports and many frayed tempers, with thousands of passengers learning via text message that their flight would not leave after the scheduled take-off time.

Both airlines and airports blame staff shortages – and the government – but they have been widely accused of over-booking customers and shooting themselves in the foot.

British Airways and easyJet, for example, axed staff despite taxpayer support as the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 – forcing international travel to a halt as lockdowns were imposed.

The sector as a whole saw tens of thousands of workers leave as flights were grounded and airports resembled ghost towns.

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Aviation has since accused ministers of a failure to communicate over the reopening of the skies to aid recruitment and difficulties for new staff in securing crucial security clearances.

Karen Dee, the chief executive of the Airport Operators Association, told the committee she could not guarantee that the problems would be fixed in time for the summer holidays.

Oliver Richardson, national officer for air transport at the Unite union, told the committee the industry had been too quick to sack people, while many experienced personnel had taken advantage of offers to leave during the public health emergency as the packages were more attractive.

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Lisa Tremble, BA’s corporate affairs director, defended its decision to sack more than 10 thousand workers on the grounds that it was losing £20m a day in the spring of 2020 said the airline and behaved in the “most responsible way possible” at the time.

She said BA was currently seeking 6,000 more personnel and would not confirm, in response to questioning, that it had shot itself in the foot.

Representatives from TUI and easyJet also apologised to customers for the disruption.

But when it came to the treatment of passengers by airlines during the recent chaos, Ms Davies from Which? said the Civil Aviation Authority had proved toothless in its policing of the industry’s obligations.

She told the MPs: “We’re still seeing airlines appearing to book flights, when they don’t know for sure that those flights are actually going to be able to go.

“We’ve seen people given information at very short notice, and haven’t really been given proper information about their rights.

“We feel that obviously there’s some really specific issues at the moment in this case, but this is just symptomatic of some of the issues that we’ve seen in the industry for a long time.

“There’s just blatant flouting of consumer rights and a failure to put passenger interests first.”

Earlier, the committee’s chair Darren Jones expressed frustration over the chief executive of British Airways’ failure to give evidence during the session on Tuesday.

He said it was “unfortunate” that Sean Doyle “was unable to find 45 minutes” to answer MPs’ questions but added that he had agreed to appear before the committee later this month.

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