This morning’s instalment of GB News was ground to a halt for a travel announcement about airlines being able to cancel flights in advance. Hosting live from the US, but addressing the breaking alert for the UK, presenter Ben Leo said: “This is going to stitch up thousands of holiday makers, business people taking flights.” Correspondent Claire Muldoon explained as the breaking news banner flashed across the bottom of the screen: “Well, that was my take on it, absolutely. But the spin from the Government is that it will give people long-term certainty and avoid unnecessary disruption upon travelling at the departure gate this summer, says the Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.”
Muldoon queried: “Well, I don’t quite get that.” Speaking to Leo, she added: “As you said only last week, the unions were saying, ‘We have got enough fuel, it’s absolutely fine.’ And now these headlines are saying that by June, Europe is facing almost a wipeout in fuel.
“So what they have tried to do is amalgamate certain airlines which have perhaps a myriad of routes going out to the same destination on a daily basis, and what they are going to do is amalgamate them.
“But if you do that, surely these seats have already been booked, and you can only do that if you have got the seats to do it.”
She argued against that, saying that “some routes are clearly busy” and claimed a lot of airlines would not want to give up their route “because often they cost a lot of money”.
The Scottish broadcaster added: “They do not want to do that at all. It will cause an awful lot of disruption to a lot of hard working people that want to take a break from the global economy at the moment, the global geo-politial scene, and actually go and have a bit of fun.”
However, Alexander told BBC‘s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “On the basis of the information that I’ve got today, I am confident that the majority of people that are travelling this summer will have a similar experience to last year. There may be a need for airlines to trim their schedules slightly.”
