Travel with Katie Butler: New hand luggage rules coming in

Katie Butler, Total Travel, writes: I am certain as a child we had weather just as windy, and it was not classified as a storm, but of course what I don’t remember is how much it impacted flying programmes.

Almost every day last week, we were checking arrival and departure information, and tracking Flight Radar to ensure our valued customers managed to get to their destinations.

We experienced a number of flight delays as planes were unable to land and had to be diverted.

This of course has a knock-on effect for those due to depart the UK as the aircraft are then not where they should be.

Of course, adverse weather cannot be helped, and as this is classed as an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ rules out the possibility of making a claim against the airline for such delays.

Although your flight may be delayed or cancelled due to bad weather, you should still be looked after by the airline at the airport by way of drinks, refreshments and over-night accommodation, depending on the length of your flight delay.

In addition, if you are diverted to another airport as it is deemed unsafe to land, then the airline should arrange to transport you back to your airport of origin.

We have been asked several times recently what the rules will be this summer relating to liquids in hand baggage.

A target was set by the government that all UK airports should have in place the required scanners and equipment that will allow liquids to be carried in hand baggage – subsequently speeding up the security process.

The target date is June of this year.

Whilst it looks promising that Leeds Bradford will be on target to achieve this for the set date, Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick do not expect to have all their scanners ready by then. This could cause confusion especially in the summer holidays.

A spokesperson for Manchester Airports Group said that while “good progress” was being made, completion of the programme is not expected until 2025.

We advise that anyone planning a holiday this summer to double-check the rules at each end of your journey.

We will of course keep you updated as best we can on this, but it is looking like we may well see different rules at different UK airports.

Last week – May and June departures were again our top-selling months for new holiday bookings, showing that many of you are looking to get away as soon as the summer season kicks-in (I don’t blame you).

No change to the top-selling destinations with Tenerife and Majorca once again retaining top spot for the summer, now for the third week in a row.

Long Haul was also really strong for us last week accounting for 30 per cent of our total new bookings, those bucket-list holidays are proving extremely popular.