What more can you tell us? Good morning.

Well, this was Aer Lingus flight 402 going from Dublin to Rome.

Absolutely normal flight.

It took off at 6.40 a.m., flew perfectly happily over Wales, over England.

And it was just south of Paris at 7.50 a.m. when suddenly, clearly, a threat had come in.

And at that stage, the pilots would have been in touch with the ground, with the French authorities.

The aircraft went into a holding pattern west of Paris and then eventually diverted to the military airfield at Evra in France.

It has a big share of the market, but it is really worrying for travellers, isn't it? I mean, even if there isn't any actual threat, the disruption alone is very frustrating.

Good morning,

Sean.

Exactly as you say, this was an order of magnitude less bad than the events two weeks ago.

Today, we've had about 200 flights cancelled altogether compared with about 2000.

But my goodness, the effects, there's going to be people listening as they are driving home from airports such as Amsterdam.

Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast International, having got in a couple of hours late on holiday flights on Jet 2, on Ryanair, on EasyJet from various parts of the world, as well as lots of people waking up where they didn't expect to be because their flights were cancelled yesterday.

And the airline accountants are going to be... furious once again, because this lands with them.

When you see that air traffic control is causing these issues, does there need to be an urgent fundamental review?

Uh, can you just talk us through what exactly happened with this power bank o- on this flight?

Well, yeah, it's, um, uh, power banks are extremely, uh, regarded as possibly one of the greatest threats to civil aviation at the moment, um, in, and because of their, the, the potential they have to catch fire.

And there are increasingly strict rules about them.

Uh, they, for instance, can never be checked into your, uh, hold baggage.

They've always got to be in the, in the cabin with you.

And if you get to the situation where a power bank or, indeed, a, a mobile phone becomes trapped in the mechanism of a seat, that is regarded as potentially extremely dangerous, and the only choice you have is to, uh, for, for the plane to land as swiftly and as safely as possible, um, where the incident is dealt with, and then, um, everybody moves on.

But, uh, this is a known, known hazard, and you quite possibly will have seen on social media many videos of, of, um, power banks, particularly rather dodgy ones, break, bursting into f- uh, flames because, um, well, they were badly made, they either get damaged, or they just, um, self-combust.

But in terms of, um, when something like this happens mid-flight or, indeed, as this one, in the middle of the Atlantic, like, how serious is that, and, and what would be the protocol among cabin crew, uh, when an incident, when something like this starts smoking in the cabin?

R-A-T-P. Yeah.

Anyway, it, it's irrelevant because if you want to i- investigate it, just, just tap in Navigo, um, which I think is pretty much the same, N-A-V-I-G-O.

And they indeed do a weekly travel pass.

It costs for all the zones in Paris, and they, that even reaches out as far as the airports, and I think this also covers the Metro out to, um, Orly, which otherwise has a ridiculous 11 euro surcharge.

Um, it, it's 32 euros 40 per week.

The crucial thing is that you don't, you, you can't start on a Wednesday and finish on a Tuesday.

It has to start on a Monday and finish on a Sunday.

... that still gives us all sorts of possibilities, doesn't it? I mean, war, fire, weather, even the European, um, entry/exit system.

But what do you make of this year? Have you seen such a concentration of natural hazards for holidaymakers?

No, absolutely not.

I mean, as you say, I've been covering the annual getaway since pretty much the dawn of the jet age.

But now we are in a situation where the best advice I can give to people is hope for the best.

But keep your phone switched on in case there is a sudden order in the early hours to evacuate.

I mean, last week, the.

wildfires were destroying communities and indeed holiday parks in southwest France.

Now, I mean, does that mean that, I mean, people, British tourists, but I've noticed what's going on are actually changing their plans, they're reacting?

Is she likely to do anything?

I think she probably will not, except... maybe have an informal word with some of the governments in the countries where we are seeing particular problems.

This has been going on for a decade.

The idea that you need to have secure digital border checks in order to maintain the security of the European Union.

And the line coming out of Brussels is that this is generally working across the continent.

There are one or two places where there are problems and they're trying to get the national governments to get up to speed.

But I'm afraid for the EU as a whole to say, yeah, let's give up all of this and we'll try again in September, would, I'm afraid, be too much of an embarrassing climb down.

What's your advice to them?

For those who have already been moved out, Simon, what rights do they have for compensation for a ruined holiday because of this?

It's, it's a slightly complicated one because there's two main ways that people will book trips to that part of Europe, either on a package holiday, that's much more typical when you're on a beach trip to the, uh, to, to the Spanish Costas, um, and that's where a single company has arranged transport and accommodation.

But lots of people will actually have made independent arrangements, um, typically, uh, booking maybe a ferry crossing to, uh, northern France or, or, or flights, and then sourcing accommodation, whether that's a, a campsite or holiday apartment.

Now, if it's a package holiday, then the company that organized it is responsible for getting you, um, alternative travel arrangements, uh, continuing perhaps the trip in a different location or simply going home early.

That should be at the company's expense, and you may even qualify for a partial refund of the cost of your holiday if you come back early.

But if it's an independently organized trip, it is trickier.

Uh, many people will have incurred lots of extra expense for overnight accommodation, maybe paying extra for flights home.

What should they do at this point?

What's the American angle?

Well, uh, [laughs] more complicated even than that 'cause it was the Maltese, um, uh, subsidiary of Ryanair, and also the event took place, it appears, over North Macedonia, so they are involved in as well.

But basically, the US National Transportation Safety Board, a very, um, well-regarded organization, is taking the lead because it's a, an American-made aircraft.

There are thousands of these particular models, so it's the, uh, kind of previous generation of Boeing 737s.

Most of them these days are, are the MAX.

Um, so many of them flying, many in the US, that, uh, it made sense for them to take the lead.

Um, but of course, as always with aviation safety, people are just very keen to understand what happened, why it happened, whether it could happen again, and what, if anything, needs to be done in order to prevent a repeat.

What do we know so far, Simon? Is, is, is the, the best guess at this stage that a piece came out of one of the engine fan blades and struck the window, and that, that's what triggered this? Is, is that right?

So with the playing field set, who wins a price comparison?

If I'm looking a day ahead for the cheapest train fare, I'm looking at about 80 pounds, and this is for the evening rush hour.

And if you go to the planes, then the cheapest fare at actual tee time is 138 pounds.

But if you fly at 9:20 in the evening, and frankly, because of the speed of planes, you catch up with the, uh, the 6:30 train out of King's Cross, um, that falls to 79.

So that's fairly equivalent.

And looking four weeks ahead, it's a different picture.

Cheapest train about 50 pounds, uh, the cheapest plane about 38 pounds.

Where there's no competition, however, economics takes its course.

We're going to avoid the question of luggage here mainly because I find it intensely triggering so with the playing field set who wins a price comparison?

If I'm looking a day ahead for the cheapest train fare, I'm looking at about £80.

And this is for the evening rush hour.

And if you go to the planes, then the cheapest fare at actual tea time is £138.

But if you fly at 9.20 in the evening, and frankly, because of the speed of planes, you catch up with the 6.30 train out of King's Cross.

That falls to £79.

So that's fairly equivalent.

Where there's no competition, however, economics takes its course.

And how does AI play a part in this, Simon?

Well, it seems to be that previously, before AI became a real thing, if you were going through TripAdvisor, you would go through in the way that I think many people would do so, which is, let's have a look at all the good reviews and all the worst reviews.

You kind of ignore, in my view, the very best, because as one hotelier put it to me, they were bad.

placed there by, first of all, the hotelier himself, then the hotelier's sister, et cetera, et cetera.

And you ignore the very worst, again, because those could well have been placed by more properties.

And you found the truth sort of somewhere in the middle.

But now TripAdvisor seems to be using AI to have a look through the reviews and come up with an overview.

And does it go further as well, Simon? I mean, is there a suggestion that some of the photos or reviews are, they're made by AI, they're AI produced, they're not actually real at all at all?

How does all of this get administered? Is it that when you get onto the water taxi to go into the main part of Venice, you pay them the fee? uh it

all depends so um basically you are encouraged obviously to go online if by the way you're staying in hotels then that should not be a a a problem for you because that will normally be covered it's the day trippers that that Venice really wants to manage.

The people who are coming in, typically on coaches or trains, the community thinks they're not really contributing very much, and they are making it exactly, as you say, into more and more of a theme park.

And so, therefore, the idea will simply be that you go online for the day you want to, or indeed, well, many people, I think, listening may have been on the train which goes across the uh the lagoon into venice you come out of the station there and basically there's a whole lot of people who've been expecting you and they're either going to check your qr code to check that you have paid or indeed they are going to say um right step this way Madam Sir, and here's today's charge and here's what it's going to cost you.

Surely it is in the interests of the city to have people come in, buy some tat, eat lunch and leave because it pays the gondoliers, it pays the trattorias and that's how the thing works.

Oh, sure.

But there's places across Europe who are saying enough.

We don't need any more.

But will airlines be still able to allow passengers who travel without a bag to travel on a discounted fare?

Yes, the whole thing is completely mad.

You might remember that the European Parliament was absolutely set on saying that every single airline had to allow you to take a roll-along case and a small backpack on board as cabin baggage.

This is completely unworkable.

If you look at Ryanair, they've got aircraft which can hold 197 passengers, but unfortunately only 90... bags.

So that simply isn't going to work.

So somebody had a word with the European Parliament and basically said, you've got to find some fudge to work around

A couple of changes on the way if you could run them through them, run us through them before you go.

Can you tell me about those?

Yes, I certainly can.

And first of all, I'm so sorry about the connection problems.

I'm speaking to you from Newcastle upon Tyne.

I thought I had a very good signal, but there we are.

I'm out in the open and I will carry on as much as I can.

Yes, I actually carbon date.

The protests that we have seen in Barcelona or Ibiza or again in Mallorca, Have they had any impact? Are we seeing any change in tourist behaviour? Are we seeing any moves by the authorities to limit the number of Airbnbs or to stop foreigners from coming in and buying whatever available houses are there in the region and using them as holiday homes?

So what exactly does Ryanair do, Simon?

Okay.

Well, if I can go back to what the Civil Aviation Authority demands, they say that basically young children should be accompanied by adults and seated in the same row as the adult.

And the airlines generally do that.

So EasyJet, Jet2, British Airways will generally sit people together free of charge.

But Ryanair, as you say, Europe's biggest budget airline, as with so many things, does things rather differently.

And parents are told that if you've got children aged 2 to 12, then they will get free reserved seating so they can sit beside a parent.

And there's one other leg to this as well, Simon, isn't there? Part of the investigation is going to examine whether this policy charging for this mandatory family seat falls under the drip pricing method, which of course was banned in 2024.

But according to Simon Calder, passenger behavior is still changing.

There are significant changes in holiday behavior, but actually only for some specific places, notably, of course, the Gulf.

Nobody really is going on holiday to Dubai.

It's on the Foreign Office no-go list, as is Qatar.

So, uh, those are off, off the, uh, uh, spectrum for now.

Um, on top of that, there's the concerns that some people have about the Eastern Mediterranean, in particular Turkey and Cyprus.

There's the sense that, oh, it's quite close to the trouble.

But head of the International Air Transport Association, Willie Walsh, told the BBC that higher prices are inevitable, and Simon Calder agrees.

It will strike fear in the hearts of travel agents, I assume, if they are now going to be held financially responsible for the provision of sunbeds by hotels they don't run.

Exactly the opposite, in fact.

What they should be doing, I believe, is actually monetising this.

and they should be saying, along with the hotel, right, we know, we've got a map of the various sunbeds.

We know where they are.

You can book one in advance, six months ahead of your trip, and that's yours all week or all fortnight.

You can rely on having that.

What is it that stops people arriving down to find towels on a sun lounger and taking the towels off?

me.

Yes, exactly.

And it's got a picture of somebody in tears at an airport due to flight cancellations.

And I am really, really concerned about this, Jeremy.

That's very, very good there because it is absolutely wide of the mark.

And people are going to be listening to you and reading the sun and thinking, oh, my goodness, my holiday is in peril.

But I tell you what, it isn't.

That would be fair to say, yes?

149 on board, is that

right? That's right, yes.

And we have very sadly seen three deaths.

There's also a British man who's in hospital in South Africa.

Two crew members are reported to have acute respiratory problems.

And the World Health Organization has said in the past hour that they are doing all they can to arrange medivacs for both the crew members to take them from Cape Verde to actually the Netherlands for treatment.

And there's a couple of air ambulances apparently being flown out there, along with the partner of the German man who died yesterday.

Nonetheless, a very, very frightening experience.

We're now calling all passengers to buckle up and look forward to what 2026 might have in store for us, numerically, of course.

[upbeat music] I'm Simon Calder, travel correspondent of The Independent and, as it happens, a mathematics graduate, and my number for 2026 is 100 million, and it represents what I predict to be the number of international passengers passing through Dubai International Airport on the Gulf in the United Arab Emirates.

It will be the first time that any airport anywhere in the world has hit that number.

And of course, unlike visitors to a shopping mall or a public park, every passenger traveling through an airport is carefully counted.

We're still waiting for the passenger numbers in 2025 for Dubai.

I'm expecting them to be just over 96 million.

That would indicate a 5% rise in passenger numbers since 2024, and that really matches the pace of growth that we are seeing.

So it's certainly gonna be at least 99 million, subject of course, to the odd pandemic.

187 billion euros, in fact, per year in Spain.

Oh yes, Spain, absolutely our top holiday destination.

I was there just last week.

It was absolutely beautiful.

I was extremely welcomed.

I was well looked after.

But yeah, if I'd been sitting in Palma in a cafe yesterday, I could well have been squirted with a water pistol as part of...

Perhaps they should blast the water pistol in their own ears.