Airports around the world have delayed and canceled flights due to ongoing staff shortages, with travel demand continuing to be high.
Various airports report long queues that often get long at check-in counters. By Wall Street MagazineAmsterdam’s Schiphol Airport “started to limit the number of passengers allowed inside, asking passengers not to arrive more than four hours before departure”, and also advised people to wear comfortable shoes due to long waits.
The major staffing shortage has resulted from severe coronavirus restrictions affecting travel worldwide during the pandemic, and while most restrictions have been lifted as people travel to Europe for their summer holidays, staffing shortages remain. Sydney Airport, for example, recently held a job fair to fill the 5,000 employee shortage. This has led to an unprecedented increase in flight cancellations and many other operational problems such as Switzerland temporarily closing its airspace due to an IT failure. By WSJ:
Delays are particularly high this summer, especially in Europe. So far this month, 25% of scheduled flights to the continent excluding Russia have departed late with an average delay of 34 minutes… 21% with an average delay of 28 minutes in June 2019, by comparison. In Amsterdam, 36% of flights were delayed this month compared to 28% in 2019.
Flight cancellations increased in June, according to data compiled by aviation consulting agency Cirium. In the US, about 3% of scheduled flights were canceled this month, up from 2% in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. The total number of cancellations increased by 16% compared to the previous year and reached 13,581.
In Europe, excluding Russia, around 2% of all flights were canceled in June compared to 1% in the same period of 2019. The number of canceled flights increased by 162% compared to the same period in June and rose to 8,228.
As Breitbart News reported on Tuesday, American Airlines announced that it will suspend flights to three cities this fall: Islip and Ithaca, New York, and Toledo, Ohio, due to the continuing shortage of pilots in the aviation industry. JetBlue also cut flights during the summer due to personnel issues, while United Airlines has expanded its training program to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030.
Besides pilots, the aviation industry struggled with air traffic control, airport security, baggage handling, catering and check-in. Airports anticipate the problem will continue into next fall, which will certainly increase travel time due to the holiday season, as anticipated employees must go through stringent security screening procedures, which typically take up to 16 weeks. “Returning staff to the airport is not the same as hiring staff for a restaurant or supermarket,” said Olivier Jankovetz, CEO of ACI Europe Airports Group.
“We needed to launch a recruiting campaign about six months ago to become a full-fledged resource today,” Jankovec told the WSJ.
Source: Breitbart
