Tui cancels flights and holidays as passengers wait at departure gates

Europe’s biggest travel firm, Tui, is cancelling more peak-season package holidays as it struggles to recover from the CrowdStrike chaos.

The firm’s crew rostering system was impacted by Friday’s IT outage. Tui grounded 64 holiday flights to and from the UK on Friday, with further delays and cancellations on Saturday and Sunday.

The company is taking the highly unusual step of cancelling entire package holidays to manage down the scale of its problems – which are particularly acute at Manchester airport.

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A passenger who had been waiting for a Manchester-Lanzarote flight due out at 6am on Sunday morning learnt shortly before noon that her whole holiday had been cancelled.

She told The Independent she has now rebooked with Jet2 Holidays to go to Tenerife on Monday.

Tui’s Manchester-Cancun flight due out at 12 noon on Saturday was eventually cancelled eight hours later.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was ready to go to the Mexican resort, but Tui decided to deploy it first to take passengers out to Palma de Mallorca and bring others home.

Passenger Lindsay Dawes said that at the departure gate for the Cancun flight, they were “told there’s no pilot as the crew have gone over their hours”.

She said: “We were then sent through security to arrivals where the staff basically couldn’t answer anything and told us to arrange our own hotels and transport for the night.”

Under air passengers’ rights rules, an airline that cancels a flight is obliged to provide hotels and meals if necessary.

A spokesperson for Tui said: “Due to the global IT issue at airports and airlines around the world on Friday, Tui’s overall service this weekend was heavily impacted and we would like to apologise to everyone affected.

“Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control, the impact to our systems on Friday has meant that our flight programme has suffered continued delays that we have not been able to resolve.

“We therefore made the difficult decision to cancel a number of outbound flights and delayed a number of inbound flights returning to the UK on Friday 19 July and Sunday 21 July.

“We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this would have been and recognise that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their departure.”

“Our teams are working extremely hard to get everyone on, or home from, their holiday as soon as possible.”

British Airways and easyJet have together cancelled dozens of flights on Sunday, mainly at London Heathrow and London Gatwick respectively. They blame the effects of adverse weather in Continental Europe and severe air-traffic control (ATC) restrictions.

An easyJet passenger, Adam Collyer, wrote on X/Twitter: “Naples airport flight with easyJet at 10.30am to Gatwick. Cancelled at 6am. No alternative flights available and no help or guidance provided whatsoever on their behalf. Now booked in with Jet2 flying to Manchester.”

A spokesperson for easyJet said: ”Unfortunately, some flights were unable to operate due to the impact of weather and capacity related ATC restrictions imposed across Europe yesterday, 20 July, which led to delays and some cancellations, and as a result a knock-on impact which led to aircraft being positioned out of base.

“We are doing all possible to minimise the impact on our customers, providing those on cancelled flights with options to rebook or receive a refund, as well as hotel accommodation and meals where required.”

The airline had planned to operate around 3,800 flights over this weekend.

To make matters even worse for Manchester airport passengers, there is a points failure on the rail line to and from Manchester Piccadilly.

TransPennine Express said: “Train service running to and from these stations may be cancelled or delayed by up to 45 minutes.”