Will European airport woes ground UAE residents’ Easter, summer travel plans?

Will European airport woes ground UAE residents’ Easter, summer travel plans?

Dubai: UAE travellers with holiday plans for the UK and other European countries should brace themselves for delays, cancellations and a range of other inconveniences as disruptions at airports in the continent are expected to continue during the Easter holidays and well into the peak summer travel season. Since Europe and the UK are a hive of strike action right now, with many employees unhappy that sky-high inflation has not been matched by higher wages, airports and public transport services across the EU and Britain are suffering disruptions. And that, in turn, has caused flight cancellations and delays in airports across Spain, Portugal, Germany and France. The UK is among the worst affected. Ten days of strike action by security staff at Heathrow started on March 31, resulting in British Airways cancelling more than 300 flights during the busy Easter holidays. Over 2 per cent of London Heathrow’s total flights were cancelled last summer. Since the summer of 2022, UAE carriers Etihad and Emirates had to cancel several flights to Germany, France and the UK due to industrial strikes, all this while aggressively resuming their operations to pre-pandemic capacities. Aviation analyst Sean Mendis said: “It is quite the summer of