Some of you really need to find other things to do during the a day!
Delays and operational problems occur. The industry is recovering after a difficult two years. TUI is not on its own here.

Agreed its recovering after the last 2 years and TUI is not on its own. But it is hardly doing any harm if people want to post about delays and operational problems. It's just a forum hardly going to damage TUI. This is an Airline, Airports and Routes section, so people are within their rights to post about it. You can certainly tell who works for TUI on these forums and other airline threads that's for sure.

Indeed, agree with eveything you just said. Nearly every major airline and airport in the UK and across world is struggling and recovering. After 2 years of stagnation and despite constantly promoting 2022 as the year travel bounces back... it seems the sector has been woefully underprepared and let down massively by other service providers and processes. That said, it's very clear that in the rush to recover and grow again, many operators including TUI have put on huge programs that they don't have the capability of delivering.

Yes we can see other airlines struggling, Easyjet and Jet2 among others but TUI are having truly awful delays here. People's holidays and flights going days late and sometimes not at all. Communication seems to be lacking and the issues snowballing.

I'm not a TUI basher but I do work in the industry and their on time performance is not the best. They operate a huge program with a modest size fleet, only takes 1 tech aircraft to cause a significant ripple effect. Prime example is the 787 fleet during the winter, the aircraft are utilised to the max on long haul routes and they simply can't recover the delays as the week rolls on. That same issue is spilling over into the summer and is amplified by the problems all airlines are having plus the failings of ACMI partners.

I do hope things improve, it's awful to think some people's first holiday in 2 years will start or end in chaos and its very damaging for the airlines reputation.

I do not work for any airline. I am a truly independent commentator.

This has been posted by TUI on Facebook in response to customer comments:

”Hi, due to various factors causing delays we felt the impact to customers holiday was too great and took the difficult decision to cancel some flights. A full refund will be given ASAP, we understand how disappointing this is and we do apologies for any inconvenience caused. ^Dan”

Their Facebook/Instagram posts are riddled with people complaining about recent delays or stuck in airports with no info. Also people considering cancelling and switching to Jet2 due to news of their recent performance spreading. I truly hope things improve as this will not help their reputation.

Email just received by my friends, informing of an additional delay and a new estimated departure time 23:39 tonight. So 40 hours delay since the original departure time. They are all still in the Hilton at Heathrow wondering if they are going to be bused back to Gatwick today at all, as they are now being bused to another hotel at Heathrow for dinner. If it were me I think I'd be on the verge of giving up at this point, although I'm not sure what the situation is if you cancel before the airline does. I can't help feeling it might be better for TUI to just cancel the flight now and try and claw back some resources - it feels like they are running up a down escalator.

Does anyone know what happened to the TOM748 BHX - AYT which was meant to depart at 0600 hours yesterday? It was on the departure board but I cannot find any information on whether it actually took off or not - was it cancelled?

Im due on the same flight this Friday coming and starting to get a little anxious about all these cancellations!

This from the Guardian today
https://www.theguardian.com/business...m-travel-chaos

We are on the CUN flight on Tuesday morning so keeping my fingers crossed.

also SE-RFZ is positioning back to MAN from AMM after maintainance so hopefully that will take some pressure off the system. It was doing MAN-CUN flights before.

According to FR24, it operated today (26 hours late) from BRS-AYT-BRS. No idea whether this is the same flight but it’s showing under TOM748/9 on FR24. I can only assume they bussed the passengers down to BRS and operated it from/to there the following day. Normally would be an unusually bad situation but far from the worst recently unfortunately.

Unbelievable!

has made it on to main BBC news now… and no sign of things improving.

Im not sure meltdowns are anything particularly new for TOM, right back to the BY days. I seem to remember a TV documentary featuring Britannia and most of the storylines involved delays. I have had the minsfortune to have 2 14 hour delays with TUI (still Thomsonfly back then) on one holiday. Haven't booked a summer package holiday since.
Maybe there is less slack in the system across aircraft/crew and ground staff this year making the problems more widespread across the system.

Bring back Thomson and Britannia Airways.........

Get me back to BHX in the 70's and I'll be straight there. (So would some of my former colleagues).

Mrs Hacker works for TUI. She can see how many flights are uncrewed. Lots of them.

I’m lucky that I have left the industry but it reminds me of constant delays and disruption of the charter industry back in the 90’s. The EU 261 bills will only add to the woes of the operators that are in serious amounts of debt courtesy of covid.

My friends arrived at their hotel in Turkey about an hour ago. Fair play TUI for eventually getting the LGW-AYT operated 40ish hours late but what a palaver!

Great - I dont hold out much hope for the BHX-AYT for the 3rd June then!

The cause of much of charter travel delay and disruption is the resort changeover day concept of the fixed 1 or 2 week break which requires a large number of flights to converge on the destination airport on the same day creating congestion both on the ramp and in the terminal as the flights are timed to arrive in order to deliver passengers to the buses which then head out to the resorts having just brought the inbound passengers from the resorts.

This puts pressure on the airports in terms of check in, baggage handling, security, ramp handling and also ATC both at the airport in terms of parking and runway slots and also en-route. Personally, I think the way ahead is to do away with changeover day altogether and sell more bespoke holidays using the scheduled airlines. (and get rid of the night flights)

Its always been that way though and rarely as bad as this, so I doubt thats the main issue. There are multiple flights per week now to most of the main med destinations making the once per week changeover far less prominent.
This is a case of poor staffing, undercapacity, bad luck and unexpected demand.