Bristol Airport apologises as passengers face more travel 'chaos'

  • Bristol Airport's head of customer operations apologises to customers

The head of customer operations at Bristol Airport has apologised after weeks of long queues have seen some passengers missing flights.

Holidaymakers are still facing delays and cancellations today (Monday 6 June), with Bristol Airport's website showing that at least 10 flights due to land and depart since last night have been cancelled - and more than a dozen have been delayed.

A lack of staff has been partly blamed for disruption and delays. A jobs fair is due to take place on Thursday to try to fill the remaining 100 vacancies at the airport, which lost 400 staff during the pandemic. 

Richard Thomasson, head of customer operations, said: "We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused, we do share their frustration. My reassurance to customers going forward is that we are doing all we can to shore up those numbers.

More than a dozen flights due to take off and land at Bristol Airport have been delayed or cancelled over the last few days Credit: ITV West Country

"We'll continue to work with our airlines to minimise disruption and for those very small amount of customers who have missed their flight, we will work with our airlines so that they get to their holiday as soon as they can."

Queues have once again been building inside the terminal and passengers have been taking to social media to hit out at the disruption.

More queues at Bristol Airport as passengers face delayed and cancelled flights
Long queues at Bristol Airport as travellers arrive 5 hours before departure

Daniel Williams wrote: "Had the worst travel experience of my life today. Finally back in Spain but missed my bus home thanks to three-hour delay. Absolute chaos. No staff, no seats just utter shambles."

Another tweeted: "1am local time and still at Kos Airport waiting for our VERY delayed flight to Bristol. 6hrs is beyond a joke and our claim will be going in this week."

Passengers numbers have soared since May last year, putting added pressure on staff Credit: ITV West Country

One frustrated passenger called Roy posted on social media, writing: "Wow! Utter chaos and really bad service. Young families being made to wait at nearly 4am due to horrific baggage delays. What’s going on? Can’t run an airport?!?"

Another user called Debbie wrote: "Had a nightmare trip home with two little ones. Don’t fly from that airport! They haven’t got it together at all!"

Bosses at Bristol Airport say it has been a challenging time with more than 300,000 passengers passing through in the first nine days of May. That's compared to 42,000 in the whole of May last year.