Passengers have been warned to expect long delays at British airports over the Easter holidays amid a shortage of staff.
Thousands of people are expected to travel during the holiday period, but Karen Dee, chief executive of the Airport Operators Association has warned that queues are likely.
Ms Dee said: “We do think that there will be queues at peak times over the Easter period.”
The chief executive said UK airports needed to recruit “tens of thousands of staff” as the aviation industry continues its recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
London’s Heathrow Airport alone needed another 12,000 staff, Ms Dee added.
"We’ve started this process some time a go, but actually with those scale of numbers, particularly in a tight labour market, it is going to take us some time unfortunately,” she told the BBC.
The news comes just days after toursits claimed to have been left stranded at Heathrow after IT issues grounded British Airways flights.
Delays are expected at airports across the UK next week
Jonathan Brady
Tens of thousands of staff need to be recruited by airports, an aviation association boss has said
Steve Parsons
In a reply to a tweet by Christian Hernandez, the airline wrote: "Hi Christian, we're investigating and working hard to resolve a technical issue and apologise for the inconvenience. We will provide further updates as quickly as possible. Chris."
The delays left passengers frustrated with one user posting: "Terminal 5 all systems down. BA flights on hold."
Another passenger wrote "been stuck at Heathrow for 2.5 hours unable to check in with British Airways due to them experiencing a 'global IT system failure'… no one seems to have answers or know what’s going on."
A Heathrow spokesman said at the time: "A technical issue which affected British Airways this afternoon has now been resolved.
“We are working with our airport partners to assist passengers whose journeys have been disrupted and have deployed additional resource in our terminals.
“Passengers are still advised to check their flight status with British Airways before travelling to the airport due to a number of resulting cancellations. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
The airline apologised for the issue and said it “deeply regretted” being forced to cancel flights on Wednesday evening.