'Heartbroken' family's holiday cancelled at Bristol Airport

A family who found out their first holiday in three years had been cancelled after arriving at the airport say they are "heartbroken".

Rachel Honey-Jones had booked the trip from Bristol Airport to Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt to celebrate her daughter's seventh birthday.

However they found out their flight had been cancelled when they arrived and said the airport was "absolute chaos".

Tui has apologised and says customers will be refunded within 14 days.

The holiday company, which has announced a raft of flight cancellations, said it was due to "a combination of factors causing operational disruption".

Ms Honey-Jones said she was "refreshing the news feeds" while she travelled from her home in Swansea with her husband and daughter as they were aware of some flights being cancelled.

It wasn't until they arrived in the car park at Bristol Airport when she received an email saying her flight had been cancelled - just over two hours before they had been due to leave.

"It's her [daughter's] seventh birthday today and we're meant to be celebrating it in Sharm," said Ms Honey-Jones.

"It would have been her first holiday in her living memory. We haven't been able to get away for three years so we were really excited for it," she added.

She said she went into the terminal to find no staff available and a sign advising people to call customer services.

"I was on hold for 45 minutes and when I eventually got through they were unaware that the holiday had been cancelled. There were delays across the board and children visibly upset," she added.

Bristol travel agent Miles Morgan said the industry was one of the worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and is struggling under the pressure of renewed demand.

"It's difficult for every industry at the moment and what we're seeing with airlines is that in focus. If you don't have enough crew it has a catastrophic effect on people's flights and holidays," he said.

"Airports are trying to ramp up recruitment but everyone is struggling to recruit so the situation is worse than we would see in a normal year.

"It's the whole machine struggling and under pressure as we build out of the pandemic," he added.

Aviation analyst Alex Macheras said the UK was seeing some of the worst of the disruption, which he believes is down to the aviation sector as a whole being "incredibly short of staff".

"We're seeing the after effects of all the decisions taken in the pandemic, meeting this early surge in summer demand.

"Tens of thousands of staff were let go because of pandemic and these companies are so short of staff.

"It's become the perfect storm. If an airline is not so short of staff that you're able to fly, you can almost guarantee that the airport is not in that situation," he said.

Mr Macheras said he expected scenes of long queues and disgruntled customers to continue until September.

"It's a lengthy process to recruit, train, get security clearance. The situation is desperate," he added.

Bristol Airport said it expects more than 300,000 passengers to pass through this week and into the Jubilee weekend, making it the busiest time for the airport since before the pandemic.

It says it is recruiting more staff to deal with the queues.

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