MILLIONS of people across the UK will this weekend roll out the bunting to revel in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations. For millions of others, this special bank holiday and English mid-term break, honouring the monarch's record breaking 70-year reign, will be the perfect time for them to slip away on a well-earned escape.

According to RAC Breakdown, an estimated 19.5 million leisure journeys will be made, with an additional 5 million using their cars in the coming days. Huge numbers which will undoubtedly put added pressure on our creaking road network and see our 4th emergency services stretched to breaking point.

However, for those who had planned to jet away for some sun, sea and sangria or let the train take the strain, the chances are that their holidays have already been well and truly scuppered.

For the second time in as many months due to the lack of foresight, greed and incompetence from our major airline operators and travel companies, thousands of flights have been cancelled, ruining the holiday plans for thousands of distraught holidaymakers.

The main culprits behind this holiday hell are again the bail-out champs British Airways, who despite receiving a £2 billion funding boost through a state-backed loan, cut 12,000 of their experienced “legacy” staff during the pandemic, including pilots, cabin and ground crew.

EasyJet, who secured a £600 million-pound cheap loan from the treasury, cut 30% of its workforce, around 4,500 experienced workers.

And TUI, Britain’s biggest holiday company, who recently smugly announced that as they were doing so well with summer bookings there would be no more job cuts on top of the 8,000 they had already shed.

Short-sighted companies who now ironically find themselves in a total flap over chronic staff shortages, and as such have been forced to cancel thousands of flights, many of them at the last minute, while exhausted passengers were slowly snaking through the terminals or abandoned on the tarmac.

Woefully inept and unprepared Manchester Airport has again ground to a halt, after Tui shamefully axed 186 flights, ruining the holiday plans of over 34,000 holidaymakers. A situation described by traumatised travellers as absolute bedlam.

BA have axed more than 16,000 flights from its summer schedule, and EasyJet have now cancelled nearly 200 flights. Cancellations that have had a huge knock-on effect at all major UK airports, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, and wrecked the holiday plans of a staggering 2 million passengers.

A furious Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has levelled the blame for the chaos firmly with those companies, saying there was “no excuse” for the shambles and warned them to stop “over selling trips” which they know they can’t deliver. Well, if he’s serious, he should immediately bring in legislation to outlaw this grubby practice. No other business I know is allowed to sell more tickets than they have seats. So why should airlines?

Well, that’s not strictly true, our rail operators have been legally doing that for years. Unfortunately, in Scotland, it’s the finding of a train that’s the problem, not a seat. The recent slashing of services and introduction of a farcical emergency timetable by our inept train operator ScotRail, over driver shortages, continues to be a source of national embarrassment and a very costly comedy of errors for our flagging tourism and hospitality sectors. A problem that is going to become more acute and acrimonious, now that the militant drivers’ union ASLEF have refused ScotRail and the Scottish Government's very generous pay offer and are holding them to ransom for even more money.

Our airlines are leaving passengers high and dry, our trains have hit the buffers and our cars are being driven off the roads by green zealots and rising fuel costs.

It's Planes, Trains and Automobiles without the belly laughs of Steve Martin and the late and great John Candy.

“You’re going the wrong way”, a driver screams as they career down the wrong side of the freeway, “how the hell does he know what way we’re going” they hilariously agree.

Sadly, it seems we don’t know what way we’re going either.