Tui suffers Q3 loss after flight disruption

Flight disruption across Europe stifled trading at Tui in early summer, costing the tour operator E75m and pushing it to a loss in Q3. Sebastian Ebel, Tui’s newly appointed CE, said the company would “fight” for compensation from airport operators for the damage to business from the travel chaos. “We are going for compensation,” said Ebel. He added that it was “very much on our agenda . . . to get something in the next coming month and it should be significant”. Europe’s largest travel group hailed its “first broadly break-even quarter post-pandemic” and said that without the extra cost of flight cancellations and travel disruption, adjusted operating profits would have been E48m in the three months to June 30. Instead, Tui booked a loss of E27m over the period. Tui said about 4% of customers faced delays of more than three hours in May and June. But it added that it cancelled fewer than 200 flights over the same period, amounting to below 1% of its summer schedule. Tui said the disruption was “mainly caused by third-party suppliers and airports due to a shortage in ground handling and airports security staff, reliability issues with lease-in partners and supplier maintenance delays”. Manchester airport in northern England was hit hardest by the flight disruption. Ebel said the greater problems facing UK airports were caused in part to labour shortage issues.<br/>