Holiday delays for stranded passengers

QUEUES, cancellations and delays dogged travellers at Britain’s airports for the second day yesterday, with passengers’ dream holidays turning to nightmares.

But airlines were able to run far more services than on the previous day as airports and passengers learned to cope with the demands of the new anti-terror regime.

British Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander said the aim was to match the scale of security needed to cope with the latest threat to the needs of busy airports.

He gave “heartfelt thanks” for the patience shown by passengers, some of whom told of long waits at airports for non-existent services.

British Airways, which had to cancel more than 400 flights on Thursday, managed to reduce yesterday’s cancellations to just over 100. Having only run about 10% of its short-haul flights in and out of Heathrow on Thursday, BA was able to operate around 70% of its short-haul programme from the west London airport yesterday.

Budget airline easyJet axed 112 flights but tried to limit cancellations to destinations which passengers could take trains to. Ryanair had to scrap more than 50 flights.

Some of the worst chaos was endured by passengers due to fly to the USA.

One of the unluckiest was student Michael Collins, 20, attempting to attend his parents’ wedding anniversary in France. Having had his flight from Nottingham cancelled on Thursday, Mr Collins rebooked from Stansted yesterday only to find, having journeyed from his home in Sheffield, that this second flight had also been axed.

“It seems I’ve spent the last day or so sitting in airports or trying to get trains to another airport,” he said.