Tui flights cancellations Manchester Airport: six flights a day cancelled throughout June amid staff shortages

Package holiday company, Tui, is planning to cancel six flights a day from Manchester Airport, until the end of June.

The cancellations are being blamed on staff shortages, after hundreds of jobs were cut when the travel industry almost came to a halt during the pandemic.

With travelling getting back to normal again, the upcoming bank holiday weekend will be one of the busiest periods so far, with around two million people set to fly - and not enough staff to help manage demand.

Other TUI flights at UK airports are not affected by the announcement.

Tui made the annoucement on Tuesday, May 31 and subsequently cancelled flights to Turkey, Greece and Spain that day.

A week later, there is still chaos in Manchester Airport as Tui continues to cancel flights daily.

However, this hasn’t limited the amount of delays that passengers are also experiencing.

At the time of writing, the 2:35pm flight to Heraklion and the 2:55pm flight to Thira are delayed by over two hours.

Earlier this morning, Tui flights to Paphos, Palma de Mallorca, Kos, Zakinthos, Tenerife, Kefallinia, Cancun, Montego Bay and Melbourne were also delayed.

Passengers flying into Manchester Airport are also experiencing issues - with today’s flights from Paphos, Palma de Mallorca and Kefallinia arriving later.

Tui will be offering customers affected by cancellations a full refund "as well as an extra gesture of goodwill".

However, one customer told the BBC that their family did not want to re-book with the holiday giants, as they "have lost all faith in Tui”.

The Tui customer, Joanna Chandramani, was meant to be on a flight to Turkey on Wednesday with her husband and twin daughters.

"The kids are devastated," said Chandramani.

• For daily updates on queues and a comprehensive guide to getting through Manchester Airport more smoothly, see here.

What has Tui said about the flight cancellations?

Tui Airways said in a statement: “Unfortunately, due to ongoing challenges in our operation, we have had to announce a small number of planned cancellations between now (31 May) and 30 June from Manchester Airport only.

“We are directly contacting all impacted customers in departure date order and they will automatically receive a full refund.

“We can reassure our customers that the remainder of our flying programme is expected to operate as planned.”

Manchester Airport’s carrier and ground handler, Swissport, is also suffering from staff shortages which has seen some passengers facing long waits to get their luggage back.

An airport spokesman added: “We understand Tui’s difficult decision to cancel a number of services over the course of the next month, although we are obviously disappointed to see passengers’ plans disrupted in this way.”

Meanwhile, motoring organisation, RAC, predicted that drivers will make 19.5 million trips by car over the Jubilee bank holiday weekend - with Friday expected to be the busiest day.

This could potentially cause traffic and delays, with the M25 forecast to be a hotspot. For the latest travel advice for all forms of transport over the bank holiday, see here.