Your views

Winter flights
Dear Sir,
Shortly after my letter to the editor over the shortage of Winter UK flights (9 March) I bumped into some German Tourists in the local super market. About a third of Majorca tourists come from Britain and another  third from Germany so I supposed they had similarly poor experiences of flying back and forward to our island. It turned out that although they’d come from a variety of German towns Tui had arranged flights and hotels without any problems. These reactions were so wildly different from our  fellow Brits experience that it questioned my assumption that the Winter problem was general. Once back home I decided to do a more realistic survey and on the Internet browsed flight departures to the UK and to Germany.
The results were so shocking I went into the airport to confirm my findings. They even amazed the extremely helpful information officer so we checked them more than once. Here are some examples. On Wednesday 12 March there were 23 direct flights between Palma and 13 different German airports. To the UK there were just 2, one to Southend and the other to London. This discrepancy in the level of service was scarcely believable so I checked it again for Friday 14 March. It was not as dire but still very poor. There were 10 UK flights to 4 destinations but 37 to 14 different German towns very much better.
This appears to be a problem specific to British travellers to Majorca. A similar survey of Malaga airport (Costa del Sol) on  14 March has the situation reversed – 25 flight to 14 UK airports with Germany trailing only 10 departures to 7 different towns. The horror stories of holiday home owners abandoning Majorca and moving to the mainland are no longer vapid threats.
These findings are devastating and make my proposed solution to the Winter flight shortage to jolly up advanced flight payments to the CEO of Monarch completely inadequate. Something major is letting down our UK tourism. Perhaps cheques made payable to Air Berlin have more chance of working – Vorsprung durch Technik?
Mike Lillico