End the chaos, Grant Shapps tells airlines

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Grant Shapps on Sunday insisted travel firms needed to stop overselling tickets and then cancelling flights while also improving the system for claiming compensation.

He said: “The airlines, the travel industry, need to make sure it’s sorted out.” The responsibility was on the industry to address the disruption now the Government had intervened to speed up security checks on new staff, he claimed.

He said: “I made a change in the law to make that easier and faster…now we need the industry itself to deliver. It is very important that flights aren’t oversold, for example.

“I want to make sure that there’s automatic compensation for passengers, but we’ll work with the industry very hard between now and the summer to make sure we don’t see a repeat of those scenes.”

Mr Shapps said staff cuts in the aviation industry during the pandemic “went too deep” and disputed claims that the airport chaos was caused by Brexit.

He also rejected calls for ­ more overseas workers to plug gaps in staffing.

“The answer can’t always be to reach for the lever marked ‘more immigration’,” the Transport Secretary said.

Mr Shapps also refused to consider bringing in the Army to sort out the logistical problems.

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