Airlines totally unprepared when travelers flew again
Airline and airport executives spent the past two years trying to convince everyone it’s safe to fly during a pandemic, touting reduced touch points and hospital-grade filters. Little did they know how overwhelmed they’d be once travel came roaring back.
From Sydney, where passengers are waiting for hours to check in, to chaotic scenes in India and Europe, where Lufthansa is canceling hundreds of flights, the aviation industry doesn’t have nearly enough people to run operations smoothly, even as post-summer demand for travel is still unclear.
As countries reopen borders and COVID-19 curbs fall away, travel has sprung back with such voracity that it’s resulted in an unprecedented labor crunch, made worse by the pandemic-induced layoffs of hundreds of thousands of workers, from pilots to cabin crew and ground-handling staff.
Many are in no mood to come back but even if they were, scaling up at such pace is a risk for airlines and airports, with spiraling inflation and economic pressures putting a question mark over how sustainable the current demand really is.“All airports and airlines are short staffed at the moment,” said Geoff Culbert, the chief executive officer of Sydney Airport, where almost half the 33,000-strong workforce lost their jobs during COVID-19. The aerodrome is furiously trying to rebuild, but “we’re not as attractive a place to work as before,” he said. “There’s still an element of concern around job security.”
Having lost their jobs
because of the pandemic, many aviation-sector employees have moved on to other less volatile careers and wooing them back is proving tough. Singapore’s Changi Airport is looking for 6,600 workers, from security to catering staff.
One outfit, Certis Group, is offering an $18,000 sign-on bonus, about 10 times the basic monthly salary, for an auxiliary police officer role that would help with traffic and crowd control.
“The staff shortages mean that we are struggling to operate our planned schedule with the quality and punctuality we promise,” Jens Ritter, the CEO of Lufthansa, said in a recent LinkedIn post, apologizing for canceled flights in Munich and Frankfurt. “Many people have left the aviation sector during the pandemic and found work elsewhere. Now, our system partners such as airports and caterers are experiencing an acute staff shortage and are struggling to hire new staff.”
The security clearances required for airport work
are also dragging on hiring. British Airways has some 3,000 potential recruits stuck in background checks while over at EasyJet Plc, there are 140 crew trained and ready but who don’t yet have the necessary air-side passes.
How airlines and airports are managing varies from region to region. In Asia, airports have typically been more proactive when it comes to avoiding meltdowns, at times denying airlines permission to add new flights or asking them to reschedule, Brendan Sobie, Singapore-based founder of consultancy Sobie Aviation, said.
Other parts of the world are just hoping for a breather as demand holds, or even begins to wane.
“No market is immune to the manpower issues so any window to address these can be seen as beneficial,” Sobie said.
The need to play catch-up was evident during a visit to Sydney Airport last Friday, the start of a long weekend. Queues to clear security for Virgin Australia and Jetstar flights snaked out the door.