Tui, easyJet and British Airways insist they are building “resilience” into their operations to avoid repeating flight cancellations seen at UK airports.
Tui and easyJet bosses also apologised for problems caused by staff shortages as the sector increased services after Covid restrictions were lifted.
Representatives from the carriers appeared on Tuesday before a special session of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee held to investigate the problems.
Asked about plans for flights in July and August, David Burling, chief executive for markets and airlines at Tui, said: “I am absolutely confident that we are putting every effort in to minimise what we can, but we don’t control every element of the system.
“If there are strikes or major air traffic control problems then that would affect every airline.”
Sophie Dekkers, easyJet chief commercial officer, said the airline was “building a buffer” against external factors, based on lessons learnt over the past few weeks, “which haven’t been good enough”.
BA’s chief corporate affairs and sustainability director, Lisa Tremble, said her airline is galvanised” to build resilience into the system.
However, when representatives of ground handler Swissport, aviation recruitment firm VHR and union Unite were asked if problems would be fixed by the summer, they said “not unless we work together”.
Burling said Tui had created a “firebreak” by pre-emptively cancelling Manchester flights and had contracted extra aircraft, crew and customer service representatives.
Tremble said BA had received 42,000 job applications, with 2,000 now in the business and 3,000 going through the reference process, which is taking 70-140 days. In May, it decided to cut 10% of its schedule, equating to about 80 flights a day.
Committee chair Darren Jones MP asked why easyJet had fared worst for on-the-day cancellations in its consumer survey.
Dekkers said it had operated 1,682 flights the previous day, with just 10 cancelled. EasyJet has reduced capacity to get more crew in its standby pool and is making pre-emptive cancellations.