At the start of the Gatwick asphalt, at the start of the mid-term, thousands of miles from the maritime destination of Cyprus where his plane should have landed, a shout that spoke to countless passengers filled the cabin: ” I don’t need that … It’s out of my control, completely out of my control. “
The scream came, worryingly, not from a passenger but from the pilot of the Wizz Air plane, and was captured in a TikTok video that went viral. Now, with the chaos taking over the industry, the heads of airlines and airports seem to be victims of circumstances just like passengers and pilots. So where are the problems and will they be fixed in time for the summer?
Looking back on their situation two years ago, airlines could welcome the current turmoil: at the time, with the coronavirus sweeping the world, most had not flown a passenger for months. More airlines were bowed out for his death than for a speedy recovery. Even in early 2022, many leisure trips were ruled out by the Omicron variant.
But demand for holidays and flights has risen: airlines have returned to 85% of 2019 flight capacity across Europe. However, an industry that lost much of its staff – thousands laid off, others attracted to other sectors, some missing after Brexit – has not yet completely replaced them.
Discussions about where the blame lies have encouraged government and industry meetings. Were the leave plans generous enough? Were travel restrictions too abruptly dropped? Were the airlines too slow to respond?
EasyJet and BA planes parked in Gatwick last year. Photo: Peter Nicholls / Reuters
Passengers are often to blame for the airline they booked with, and much of the blame has fallen on easyJet. The largest airline in the UK canceled hundreds of flights, many shortly before departure, again changing the plans for tens of thousands of passengers. A thunderous letter from the French pilots’ union accused Luton executives of presiding over “unprecedented chaos”: canceling viable flights and waiting too long to eliminate others.
EasyJet may blame external factors (chaos at Schiphol in Amsterdam, air traffic control problems, even weird weather), but competitor Ryanair, which operates more flights now than in 2019, has flown. Like British Airways, easyJet has also suffered the self-inflicted chaos of a major computer failure.
BA, however, opted to cut hard and soon, canceling many summer flights after a terrible Easter instead of making more last-minute mistakes. EasyJet has not yet followed suit.
Some sources say the board, led by President Stephen Hester, may be nervous. Chief Executive Officer Johan Lundgren, who pledged to use the data to reduce disruptions and cancellations when he took office in 2017, and Chief Operating Officer Peter Bellew, before Ryanair, would probably be the first in the line of fire.
A spokesman said: “Since April, easyJet has operated about 1,700 flights and transported around 250,000 customers every day. However, the difficult operating environment continues to have an impact and we regret the cancellations of recent days. EasyJet remains absolutely focused on our day-to-day operations and continues to monitor it closely, and will not hesitate to take further action as necessary. “
The airline claims to have no direct recruitment issues and maintains a similar level of waiting crews as before the Covid. However, he removed rows of seats from his A319s to reduce the number of crew needed on each flight.
Despite low wages and antisocial hours, the perceived glamor of cabin crew work still carries many applicants. (This is less the case for ground safety and handling work.) However, across the industry, new recruits have waited months to clear background checks.
EasyJet has suffered especially in Gatwick, where it is by far the largest airline. The airport, partially shut down during the Covid, fired many employees; those who remained faced with wage freezes and an uncertain future. This year, the Unite union won a staggering 10% pay rise by easyJet’s outsourced land manager, DHL, highlighting the shift in power in the job market.
CEO Johan Lundgren pledged to reduce cancellations to easyJet when he took over in 2017. Photo: Antonio Olmos / the Observer
Much of the customer experience depends on these contractors, in the billing and handling of the bags. Delays and cancellations can be caused by the side effects of a problem at a different airport, fueling what has been risked into becoming an indecent game of guilt.
Difficulties can make snowballing, especially for low-cost airlines with fast response times: delayed boarding means that schedules are not only reduced for the crew, whose schedule is limited for reasons security, but for subcontracted personnel that could serve several airlines. They can increase even more when, for example, the bags of passengers who miss a flight due to congestion for safety have to be taken off the plane. And more staff is needed to help those who are stranded.
Heathrow chief John Holland-Kaye has warned that the system could take 18 months to reach all staff. Individual companies and airports that say they rely on their own recruitment still have doubts about the rest of the system that keeps flights high. And analysts are wondering about resilience: an industry that was almost bankrupt could barely afford to employ surplus staff, not with the kind of long-term contracts that would attract many into a tight job market.
In the meantime, the perennial stings of summer, the air traffic control strikes, are likely to be repeated. Even without these, an ominous note from Eurocontrol last week warned that several air navigation services had no capacity for scheduled flights and that the next six weeks would be “extremely difficult for many airports”.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary was unusually magnanimous about easyJet’s agitation: “We’re all wrong and we’re all human.”
BA made the switch in late April and cut 10% of its capacity by the end of October, about 100 flights a day. Should EasyJet have canceled more flights? Revenue-hungry airlines and travel companies have long been observing the huge accumulated demand from customers desperate to travel abroad this summer, whatever the cost. Some still used booked travel vouchers or refunds until 2019.
Equally, many fear that customers will tighten their belts in the winter time and reserve for 2023, when large energy bills will exacerbate the cost of living crisis. Rising wages and fuel costs will cause air fares to rise sharply this year.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary was unusually magnanimous about easyJet’s agitation in recent interviews, although his own airline announced its zero cancellations last month: “We’re all wrong and we’re all wrong. we are human “. Its own airline is threatened by Spanish strikes, although Ryanair, mainly based in Stansted and with few flights to Schiphol, has avoided some of easyJet’s worst nightmares.
For some, easyJet’s problems are simply the bad luck that any airline can suffer, augmented by its size, the state of the industry, and the rush in the medium term. Other carriers are not immune: KLM flew empty planes back to its Schiphol center instead of increasing congestion; Lufthansa canceled 900 summer flights last week; Tui, BA and Wizz Air have suffered late cancellations. And as Wizz chief József Váradi told tired staff last week, as he watched a £ 100million-linked stock bonus run out, it was causing “huge financial and reputational damage”.
Can it be fixed in the short six weeks before the summer holidays? More staff are joining the industry all the time and security clearance is accelerating. Covid restrictions can be further alleviated. Border queues for British people with post-Brexit blue passports could possibly be reduced.
But don’t trust it. As some experts suggest, passengers may also have forgotten how sad and crowded a high-season airport usually looks. It’s the price of a vacation. Welcome back.