AS HUNDREDS of airline passengers contemplated the wreckage of their travel and holiday plans yesterday and again today, there was one emotion that overtook even anger – sheer frustration.

How long does this pointless, malicious, disruption have to go on before it is brought to a halt?

It is bad enough for travellers. But for islanders there is a double whammy. Not only the ever-present risk of the firefighters being too tired or too ill to turn up to work at critical moments, but also the sense that the clock is running.

It is their money, as taxpayers, that has been lavished on the airport firemen to try to buy some order to this sorry and inexplicable charade and they face paying again as Flybe and the other airlines launch legal actions to try to recoup their losses.

What makes this even more sickening is the holier than thou attitude coming from the men’s union, that it is the fire crews who are somehow – as they claimed earlier this month – piggy in the middle of some management problem.

Events, however, have highlighted that it is the men, not management, who are the problem.

The clearest evidence is the agreement signed on 20 February this year in which the firefighters, Public Services and the States Public Sector Remuneration Committee committed to finding a solution.

Very swiftly, of course, the ‘piggies in the middle’ reneged and the development late yesterday afternoon confirmed what has been clear all along: this is an industrial dispute about money.

The management/States side has not come out of this well but Unite, the union, emerges even worse. When the Transport and General Workers’ Union was the main representative body, its leaders had a pragmatic approach towards resolving disputes. That appears to have gone as ‘Unite’ should more accurately be called Divide.

Still, now that industrial action has started, it should be easier to reach a solution.

This matter needs to be advanced to compulsory arbitration as swiftly as possible so a settlement can be imposed – the very compromise firefighters signed up to on 20 February.

What islanders should be told is who advised them to break their word on that – and why.