Holiday company Tui remained loss-making in the three months to the end of June due to the cost of disruption at UK airports.
In an interim financial report Tui said that its customers were affected by about 200 cancelled flights in May and June, particularly due to problems at Manchester Airport.
Tens of thousands of passengers across the UK have been affected by airport delays and flight cancellations, mostly due to airport staff shortages.
The travel chaos cost Tui £63m, which meant that in the April-June quarter it made an underlying pre-tax loss of £23m.
This still represented a strong improvement on the £566m underlying loss in the same period a year earlier, thanks to the rebound in travel demand.
Excluding the impact of the airport disruption, the company would have reported underlying earnings of £41m in its third quarter — its first profit since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sebastian Ebel, chief financial officer and incoming chief executive of Tui, said that the “entire European airline sector continues to face challenges” but the company has successfully ramped up its business.
He added: “We want to offer our guests the usual high Tui standards of quality and service.
“The topics of quality and customer experience are, therefore, at the top of my agenda.
“To this end, I will engage in intensive dialogues with the destinations, retail, but also with system partners such as airports and airlines.”
