'As prepared as we can be' Airports braced for getaway as chaos risk rises

It's time. The summer holidays are upon us and that sunshine jaunt booked back in January is suddenly imminent.

- Gwyn Topham

But as the first travel chaos stories of the season start to hit the headlines a power cut here, a baggage meltdown there- clouds of anxiety can gather over daydreams of beach bliss.

In the post-pandemic rush to head overseas, the air and travel industry uncovered ever new things to go wrong: in 2022, particularly, the realisation that there were simply not enough staff for the flights sold to take cooped-up Britons briefly off the island. Then last summer culminated in an unprecedented air traffic meltdown affecting tens of thousands of passengers.

But the appetite for travel continues unabated: Stansted and Manchester airports had record numbers in June, while Heathrow had its busiest ever day on 30 June. As ever more flights crowd into the airspace, and airlines sweat their assets with swift turnarounds and relentless activity, the potential for knock-on cancellations and delays is vast.

As the lottery people like to say, "it could be you", and indeed it could: it's more likely you will be stranded in a foreign airport or mysteriously sans baggage than winning a pile of cash. Gratifyingly, the odds are still small. So how is 2024 shaping up-and what can airlines, or the nervous traveller, do to further minimise the risks? Extreme weather has been arguably the biggest headache for the travel industry so far, disrupting flights and threatening to blight summers one way or another, through foreign heatwave hell, staycation high water, or an alarmingly early start to the hurricane season.

That may have contributed to the rise in late bookings reported by holiday firm Jet2, as people assess the alternatives. The extreme heat that affected much of southern Europe did not appear to deter bookings last year, according to easyJet. Any fears of late summer wildfires in Rhodes and warnings about Greece's 40C June heat are mitigated by the unusually wet and cold British summer.