Which flights tend to be the ones being cancelled at the moment?

[Abraxan]

Looking at booking our holiday for the summer and trying to see if certain flights/countries where the flight cancellations seem to be happening more.

Is it tending to be short haul more than long haul?
Is it airport specific? Or is it destination country specific?
I know TUI have cancelled holidays, are the other flight companies doing it too and if so, are any particular bad at the moment?

We have travel insurance, etc but would like to reduce the chances as much as possible from the outset if we can.

I know I can Google and I will. But figured I'd ask MN too in the meantime.

We are fairly undecided in where we want to go right now, just know it'll be a summer holidays fortnight (I teach) and somewhere hot, possibly long haul.

I'm not sure you can resolve the matter to that sort of detail, nobody has a crystal ball that good, general random points follow:

Many companies have now looked ahead, looked at logistics and personnel and taken flights out of the schedules, so you'd hope cancellations at short notice would reduce.

Have to say TUI took a kicking very recently but I'm not sure the relative scale of that was entirely justified when you looked at what was going on with at some other companies....

Yes there were lots of people seriously disrupted but it did look like the MSM got into a bit of a TUI feeding frenzy...what often got missed was other companies were also cancelling, sometimes in significant numbers, sometimes at short notice...

Other than that a couple of final general points:

You'd expect scheduled long-haul flights to probably be the least likely of any category to suffer cancellation.

OTOH last sector of the day Short haul flights where crew might be running up against hours limits or there might be night noise curfew limits at airports are probably the ones, generally, most likely to be disrupted ... but then again that's almost always been the case and not something new.

Final final point: I know a few people who have flown with the likes of BA and Easyjet in the last few days without any problems either getting through the airports or with flights being disrupted or cancelled. It's definitely not 24/7 gloom and disaster at airports, despite the way some in the MSM seem to want to keep portraying it.

BA are “consolidating” flights - mainly short haul with several flights a day to the same destination. So instead of three flights, there might only be two. Long haul I know the Miami route has dropped from two flights a day to one. They are basically just making sure the flights are full. All of this is being done with plenty of notice and though annoying where you’ve specifically chosen a time, you are usually on a flight the same day. They are cancelling very few flights at short notice.

Tui is a bigger problem.

BA are generally managing things as you describe but I'm glad you stuck a "usually" in there because I know somebody who definitely didn't get rebooked on a same day flight after a BA short haul cancellation and it cost them a holiday...That said I agree that they have generally managed to be quite proactive and would be one of the better bets, IMHO.

That said they are still at times somewhat sub-optimal in some things they do ( for example there is a thread kicking around here about about a LHR/MAN transfer that doesn't make great reading).

TUI is a difficult one to quantify verses the scale of problems at other airlines, because of the nature of their business model. They certainly took a very big hit over the holidays, which understandably got lots of coverage in the media...however there are continuing ongoing grumbles about operators such Easyjet........(though OTOH I know someone who has flown with them in the last few days perfectly OK).

TBH as I mentioned upthread I simply don't think it's possible to get into fine detail about airline A vs. airline B, at airport C or D, too many variables involved...

If really pushed for a broad brush decision then for holidays out of the UK I'd go for a major scheduled airline out of Heathrow, avoiding short haul connecting flights if at all possible (reduce the links in the chain)..Then again I might be biased..🤐

Why not book a holiday that doesn’t involve flying. You could take the ferry to Spain for example.

I think the airport is as important as the airline, if you’ve got any choice in that. Manchester seems to be having a nightmare, and it was in the Easter holidays too so I wouldn’t be confident in it being sorted for summer. We flew recently and at return airport it was primarily the Gatwick flights that were showing as delayed.

I can't bare being in a ferry I'm afraid. Even the short channel crossing is too much. We have done the tunnel a few times in the last, but want to go further afield this summer.

We have flown twice this year -February half term via Manchester, long haul. Manchester airport was a nightmare and we caught our plane by minutes, having asked to skip the queue at bag check. We'd allowed over 3 hours to check in and do bag check. Then long haul via Heathrow T5 at May half term with no issues.

We are thinking we will try to avoid Manchester if possible (our nearest airport) but it's the cancellations that seem to be causing more issues now it seems, not just delays at airports, which we can counteract by arriving even earlier.

If really pushed for a broad brush decision then for holidays out of the UK I'd go for a major scheduled airline out of Heathrow, avoiding short haul connecting flights if at all possible (reduce the links in the chain)..Then again I might be biased

I think this might be our decision. Heathrow again - even though it's a much further drive - and long haul. And booking things separately again (like we used to pre covid) rather than a package (which felt easier post covid due to risk of covid related issues) to use the scheduled flights rather than the holiday ones.

Pre covid we never left it this late to book but have somehow got into a 'last minute' booking thing. Maybe booking so late may help avoid the cancellations, who knows.

Thanks all.

Heathrow long haul scheduled flight is the best option (not BA)

It's a total bloody mess. I've not booked anything yet.

I'll fess up to (still) watching the BA Long Haul schedule with some interest and what I've seen pretty much ties in with @BookwormButNoTime 's comments upthread...plenty of consolidations well ahead of time but generally they're trying to fly people on their booked day(s).

The short haul side isn't fairing quite as well but the schedules look a bit more stable than they were, albeit with a reduced number of flights.

I'd happily take the ferry to Spain but have youbseen how much it costs? We priced it up for a family of 5 and it was 7x the price of flights! As usual, all the Environmental messaging is just hot air - governments need to do something about the price of ferries to stop people flying to Europe.

We flew ba (well it was actually American Airlines but booked through BA) to New York from Heathrow T5 last week with no issues either way. So guess it really is very much hit and miss.

Family flew in and out of Manchester as normal 10 days ago. Terminal 3 though, don't know if it makes a difference🤷‍♀️

I agree that the ferry is expensive. We look at it as part of the holiday like a mini cruise. there is none of the stress you get with flying like queuing for hours in airports and then being dependent on expensive transfers or hiring an unfamiliar car the other end. It is possible to get better deals with Brittany Ferries if you book a package of ferry plus accommodation either with Brittany Ferries direct or another tour operator. We have taken the ferry to Spain several times and loved every minute. It is a good option for Portugal too.

It's not just ferries - taking a train to France vs. flying (for instance), is MUCH more expensive AND it takes ages. I wouldn't do a ferry to Spain anyway - I get seasick and the Bay of Biscay is notoriously stormy!

Manchester Airport does seem to be bearing the brunt of holiday horrors OP, so could you fly from Liverpool, Birmingham or E. Midlands instead?

Not sure if you are in the industry or not but when you talk about consolidating flights do you know if they take into account those who have onward connecting longhaul flights? i.e. If there are 4 flights from MAN to HEA a day, and 1 of those has a few passengers with onward connections that day, would they deliberately not cancel that one, and move the passengers from the other flights instead?

Or don't they take that into account and it's purely depending on how busy a flight is?

Recent TUI long haul holiday in and out of Gatwick - no problems whatsoever.

Flew from Gatwick last week, biggest queues were easy jet & wizz, and it was mostly these flights being delayed. Security queue was long but moving. Had people on our trip who flew from Manchester had massive problems with luggage, it didn't leave & they picked it up on their return 🙈

We looked at ferries 3 months ago - a lot of summer holiday dates were already fully booked. So not the easy last minute option people assume they are.

Former industry bod here - not being funny but to avoid confusion by HEA can I ask if you mean LHR (i.e. Heathrow)...?

FWIW our local regional non UK airport had 3 plus a day to LHR normally, breakfast'ish time, lunchtime, early evening. What's happening at the moment is if for example BA are looking to cut one of the three they tend to keep the "early" and keep the "late" and cut out the middle.

Makes sense if you think about it because running the early means you are catering for travellers who need to get up to London at any point in the day for whatever reason (business in town, connecting flight), and the evening flight allows the travel at other end of the day.

Not sure if that pattern is replicated elsewhere on the BA network but from a planning POV it would get v difficult for the airline to look at transfer loads, then have a dynamic plan involving say on a Monday canceling the "early", on Tuesday cancelling the "middle"...a mainly fixed pattern of rotations for several weeks/months helps with crew and aircraft planning.

Oh yes, I do mean LHR! Was trying to be all casual clever

This is our recent experience- flew out of Liverpool to Amsterdam at Easter- no problems at all, Liverpool airport dead quiet. May half term - we drove to France via eurotunnel and tunnel wasn't great but no issues really. However, my sister was due to fly to France from Heathrow with BA and logged in to check in online the night before to see her flight had been cancelled with zero contact from them. She ended up driving as they weren't responding to her. Brother flew from the Heathrow next day with BA and they didn't load his bag onto the plane. On return his flight was massively delayed. Mum's flight to France from Gatwick with easyjet next weekend has been cancelled so she's had to rebook to another airport. BiL flew from Dublin to Stockholm with KLM via Amsterdam - flight delayed out so they missed their connection, then put on another flight to a different Swedish airport, then lost their bag and pram. Return they ended up just paying for new flights as they were cancelled again. To be honest, driving was the best thing we did it actually puts me off booking anything at all! I am looking for Oct half term but actively avoiding Manchester airport atm as I just think it'll continue to be a mess but that's frustrating as Liverpool don't have the same range of destinations. Good luck!

FWIW our local regional non UK airport had 3 plus a day to LHR normally, breakfast'ish time, lunchtime, early evening. What's happening at the moment is if for example BA are looking to cut one of the three they tend to keep the "early" and keep the "late" and cut out the middle.

Wish I'd known that before we booked a 10.40am flight. There are 2 earlier flights and then 3 later ones than ours. The later ones would get us to Heathrow too late to catch our flight so am assuming that if they canclled our one they'd put us on one of the 2 earlier flights and then we'd be hanging round Heathrow for a couple of hours?

Our nearest airport is Liverpool too. It's great compared to Manchester ( we were horrified the first time we flew from Manchester pre-COVID, it was like a zoo!). Just a pity Liverpool has limited choice of flights and airlines.

OP, if I were choosing a package holiday at themoment I'd go with Jet2. Online opinion of them seems to be better than the others.

No worries🙂, quite a few folks think LHR is the IATA three letter airport code for Lahore..

HEA is the IATA three letter code for the airport at Herat in Afghanistan...(and no, even I hadn't got that committed to memory, I had to look it up)..

For those that enjoy entertainment such as "Fun with Flags"' maybe try "fun with IATA codes"..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IATA_airport_code

and if there is demand on next weeks show I'll do "fun with ICAO airport codes".....('cos they are different to the IATA ones)