British Airways ‘proactively cutting' to meet demand says Shapps

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Grant Shapps spoke to the Transport Committee at Parliament yesterday, sharing what he learnt about British Airways’ plan to get back on track in the coming months from BA CEO Sean Doyle.

Grant Shapps was asked about how BA plans to avoid travel chaos this summer.

He responded: “You’ll be interested to know I had Sean Doyle into my office on Tuesday – the boss of British Airways – to ask him exactly this question.

“Obviously they’re a private company. He told me that they were proactively, in advance now, slimming down their programme in order to be able to meet the demand.”

Sean Doyle added that BA is experiencing “growing pains in lots of different directions, very, very quickly”.

Aviation has struggled in the recent weeks and months due to a sudden influx of flying post-pandemic.

With so many opting for staycations in the past two years, a large number of people are going abroad for the first time since before Covid hit.

A surge of holidaymakers in airports is proving too much for staff across the country.

Many airports across the UK are facing long queues and hefty delays to flights.

This has been compounded by staff shortages for a number of reasons including cases of Covid rendering employees too unwell for work.

Shapps revealed that BA are relatively okay in terms of numbers of pilots.

However, as for “those on the ground”, for example the baggage handling side of things, this has proven trickier.

He continued: “What i’ve been saying to the aviation industry is that we will look for ways to try to assist.”

Shapps did caveat this, however, stating: “I can’t – and the committee wouldn’t expect me to – compromise in any way, shape or form with aviation security and safety.

“But I have looked at the rules and have found an area that assists with the bureaucracy, particularly with regard to new people coming into the industry and their need to be security checked.”

He continued: “We can begin the training without exposing them to parts of the training which are security-related, without having the security check complete, as long as it’s complete before they start on the security-related stuff.

“And I have a statutory instrument – I think it actually comes in front of the House today – to do exactly that.”

He credited Brexit for this ability.

“It’s a small Brexit freedom that’s enabled us to do it, and this is an example of how we’ll try to work with the sector but in the end they will have to resolve these problems by getting people in the right places.”

People have taken to Twitter upon hearing the news of BA’s scale-back.

Sally Gethin tweeted: “The least worst option from a business point of view.”

@DamonP10 stated: “Biggest change for me is actual flight times. Apart from being massively more expensive the time slots for flights are just stupid.

“Who wants to land anywhere at midnight or worse?”

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