By news.sky.com
Tui has revealed a €75m (£63m) hit from the recent travel chaos.
The holiday group said its customers were affected by about 200 cancelled flights in May and June, particularly due to problems at Manchester Airport.
Many airlines have had to cancel flights and there have been delays with luggage, security, and check-in queues, due mostly to airport staff shortages.
The UK’s biggest airports Heathrow and Gatwick have been most affected, with both telling airlines to cut flight schedules so they can cope with the demand.
Tui said it remained loss-making in the three months to the end of June, due to the costs of the disruption.
It reported underlying pre-tax losses of €27m (£23m) in its third financial quarter.
Tui’s chief financial officer Sebastian Ebel will take over as chief executive at the end of the month when Fritz Joussen steps down.
Mr Ebel said the “entire European airline sector continues to face challenges”, adding: “We are consistently tackling the operational challenges of the restart (of travel following the easing of COVID-related restrictions).
“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.”
The quarterly results were still a big improvement, however, on the €669.8m (£566m) underlying loss seen at the same point last year.
The company said that if the impact of airport disruption was taken away, it would have reported underlying earnings of €48m (£41m) – its first quarterly profit since the pandemic began.
