Travel with Katie Butler: Airport 100ml liquid rule still applies for now

Katie Butler writes: In fact, at present there are only two UK airports, Teesside Regional Airport and now London City Airport, that are set up with the correct equipment. Sophisticated new scanners are now installed at London City Airport meaning that passengers can leave liquids as much as two litres in their hand luggage when going through security. They also no longer need to remove electronic devices such as laptops and tablets from their bags. Whilst this made the news last week it certainly caused some minor confusion regionally and as it stands the 100ml rule still remains in place if you are due to travel from any other airport other than Teesside and London City airports. More on this as and when we hear of further airports ready for the big change but for now, stick to the 100ml rule including all liquids to be placed in a clear re-sealable bag.

I am looking forward to feedback from our customers who have travelled over the Easter period, and whilst we are aware that some customers have experienced minor delays returning home due to air traffic control strikes in France, the disruption to date appears so far to be minimal. According to new research by Holiday Extras, most travellers (94 per cent) are expecting their holidays to be affected by strikes this summer according to their recent poll of 1,000 holidaymakers who have flown in the last three years. However, more than half of those surveyed (54 per cent) also told the holiday essentials company they hadn't actually experienced any strike-related disruption during the past three years. As we are all aware, this year we have seen strikes by Border Force at our airports and ports have had minimal impact after the government and travel operators' contingency plans kept everything moving pretty much as normal. Aside from the major disruption at Dover and ongoing in France, so far strikes have had less impact at UK airports than we initially thought, let's hope this continues to be the case throughout the summer.

Last week we received a call from Jet2holidays inviting one of our team to attend a FAM (Familiarisation) trip to Corfu in May, an opportunity to look round hotels and sample the resorts offered. We jumped at the offer of course, only to find that unfortunately (or fortunately for me) the only member of our team able to manage the given dates is indeed myself, so it looks like I will be jetting off to Corfu next month. I remind you, all this is actually work and not a holiday, although there may be a few cocktails involved.

Late deals are still flying off the shelves and with May now falling in that bracket there are many more destinations on offer such as Greece and Croatia who are starting to open for the summer season. Tenerife and Majorca remained our top selling destinations last week although we expect a shift on this in the coming weeks.