The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Airline labor problems aren’t going away — and that means delays
Staff not as experienced as pre-pandemic, not able to work as fast.
Thousands of passengers across the country had their flights canceled or delayed last week — becoming another line item on the list of travel meltdowns to make headlines this year. While storm systems were the culprit for the most recent hiccups, Newark Liberty International Airport alerts also cited staffing.
“Two things can be true at the same time,” said Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
Bad weather can have a snowball effect, causing logistics mayhem. Flight crews get held up on the tarmac, unable to work their next flight on time. Nelson argues airline staffing models don’t provide enough give in the system to accommodate such problems smoothly.
“You can’t lose one person,” she said. “It’s stretched very thin so there are just fewer employees responding to customer needs and demands and handling the issues.”
When mass delays and cancellations occur, furious and confused travelers vent on Twitter, questioning why staffing issues were impacting their flights. According to the latest air travel consumer report from the Department of Transportation, there was a 35% increase in service complaints from May to June, and complaints are nearly 270% above pre-pandemic levels.
Shouldn’t the billions of dollars in federal aid have helped solve the labor mess by now?
Is there still a labor shortage?
Whether there’s still a labor shortage in air travel depends on who you ask.
According to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, as of June, passenger airline employment in the U.S. was just 0.6% below pre-pandemic levels.
Some argue the industry was already dealing with a shortage before COVID hit. “In 2019, there was a shortage of pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers,” said
Bryan Del Monte, airline analyst and president of The Aviation Agency.
But the industry is also dealing with fewer flights, which means there shouldn’t be as much strain on the workforce.
“Our air traffic has not reached back to pre-pandemic levels yet,” said Sharon Pinkerton, the senior vice president of legislative and regulatory policy for the trade association Airlines for America (A4A).
For A4A carriers American, United, Southwest, Delta, Alaska, Hawaiian and JetBlue, Pinkerton says flights are still down 16% from 2019 levels, and the number of passengers is down 10%.
In theory, the industry should have enough people to run the show. But the problem goes beyond sheer numbers.
“Even if the airlines do have the level of staffing they need to run their operation, they are less experienced than before COVID,” aviation journalist Jason Rabinowitz said.
When airlines went through the initial shock of the pandemic, they encouraged employees to retire early or take voluntary separation leave - particularly more senior staff.
Now, after hiring to meet recovery demand, “there are more junior people,” Pinkerton said. “Yes, they’ve gone through training, et cetera, but they are not going to necessarily have the same expertise or productivity as people who are more senior — so that’s absolutely a factor.”
Gary Peterson, international vice president of the Transport Workers Union of America, and director of its Air Division, believes that’s one of the biggest contributing factors to the industry’s operational issues.
“They’re doing the best they can,” Peterson said of junior employees, but they’re not able to work as quickly or efficiently as someone with 30 years of experience. Hiring more people wouldn’t fill that experience gap, either.
“I can throw 10 people out there but it’s going to take about the same pace,” he said.
Are airlines overworking staff ?
While employment numbers are returning to normal, employees report feeling strained.
Almaz Abera, a wheelchair agent at Reagan National Airport who’s worked there for 18 years, says her job is shortstaffed and could use five additional people at each shift.
Jaime Contreras, executive vice president for 32BJ SEIU, which represents 2,500 contracted service employees at airports in the D.C. area, says workers tell him that they’re feeling short-staffed in their jobs.
“I’ve actually seen when they get off planes, workers pushing two people in wheelchairs,” Contreras said.
Analyst Del Monte says there’s a “greater utilization of labor” — meaning staff are taking on more work per person. And pushing a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster.
“If you run your engine at 110 percent capacity, it’s going to have problems, and that’s where the system is right now,” Del Monte said.
“We’re running at 110 percent trying to keep up with demand.”
Capt. Dennis Tajer, an Allied Pilots Association spokesperson and certified collective bargaining agent who represents 14,000 pilots who fly for American Airlines, says pilots are feeling that pressure, too.
“Management still builds their schedules to near the maximum on some days and throughout the month . . . there’s very little buffer in the day,” he said, adding that it also pushes on the margin of safety.
“Pilot fatigue on average this summer has been four to five times higher than we’ve seen in any summer,” Tajer said.
Capt. Jason Ambrosi, chairman of the Delta Master Executive Council that represents more than 14,000 of the carrier’s pilots, said in an email the group is flying “record amounts of overtime” to help the airline stay on schedule.
“Management still relies on pilots flying on their off days,” he said.
Nelson says current staffing models are pushing employees to their limits.
“Airlines are admitting to me that they can’t staff with the same number of people that they used to because people are either not willing or not able to work the same number of overtime hours that they were working pre-pandemic,” she said.
Pinkerton says the industry is dealing with increased rates of staff absenteeism and less inclination to work overtime. “I don’t think that this is something that necessarily is unique to the airline industry,” she said. “I think we’re like a lot of other workforces.”
Will the problem be solved by the holidays?
Pinkerton, the policy expert for the airline association, thinks carriers could soon find relief for their labor issues.
“July was better in terms of cancellations than in 2019,” she said. “If [that’s] an indication of momentum and the trend, I do think things will be better,” she said.
Scott Keyes, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights and author of “Take More Vacations,” is also feeling cautiously optimistic.
He’s noticed that cancellations have improved significantly since June, “but after the experience of the past two and a half years, I’m reluctant to make any ‘all clear, everything’s good and normal now’ because who the heck knows what’s going to happen next,” Keyes said. “But certainly things are turning in the right direction.”
Snyder says the industry should get some relief as the busy summer season ends and the system regains some slack, “but that’s a temporary reprieve. It’s not fixing the issue necessarily.”
Del Monte expects the industry to have a tough time until at least summer 2023. Petersen believes between hiring new staff, training them and giving them time to learn on the job, it’ll take a couple of years for operations to iron out kinks.
“That’s what it’s going to take to get everything back in a normal rhythm,” he said.
And some problems, like weather, may never be solved. Scientists say we can expect more disruptive storms in the future as weather disasters become more regular.
What can you do to avoid travel chaos?
While the industry continues to iron out its issues, Mike Boyd, president of the aviation consulting firm Boyd Group International, says his best advice for travelers is simple: Get there early.
“And try to have a backup plan,” he said. “You’re going to be at the mercy of the airline no matter what you do to some extent.”
That may be tricky. Part of airlines’ efforts to resolve problems has been to cut flights from their schedules. There may be fewer options if things go wrong.
“Being rebooked on the next flight may not be immediately possible either,” Del Monte said. “You may be stranded for a day or two.”
Del Monte’s biggest tip is to buy travel insurance. “I believe in it so much and actually buy it yearly,” he said.
Interest in travel insurance surged during the pandemic as people worried about getting sick away from home, but it’s also a financial safety net when travel plans go haywire. Del Monte recommends it as a protection from unexpected costs of flights being significantly delayed or canceled, or having your luggage lost.
Del Monte goes with Allianz
or AIG’s Travel Guard, and travels with their stipulations in mind. For example, he takes photos of every item in his luggage in case it goes missing and saves every receipt on a trip. Read the fine print of the policy to know exactly what’s covered and when (i.e. policies should have specific time frames for when your trip is considered delayed, or only cover costs to a certain amount).
Rabinowitz recommends keeping your eye on the weather ahead of your flight.
If a storm is coming and an airline puts out a weather waiver allowing customers to change their flights to different days or adjust the route, “you should absolutely take the airline up on that,” Rabinowitz said. You don’t want to risk ending up competing with thousands of other stranded travelers for help from a skeleton crew to fix your itinerary.
Boyd’s last piece of advice is to be patient, particularly with the staff you encounter.
“The person on the other side of the counter, whether they work for the airline or somebody else, they’re not the problem,” he said. Peterson agrees. “There’s not an agent, a mechanic, a pilot, a flight attendant, a ramp worker, a dispatcher that doesn’t want the flight to go on time,” he said.