The long-awaited post-lockdown travel boom is rapidly turning into a bust for holidaymakers as Europe’s aviation industry struggles to overcome crippling staff shortages and labour strife, forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights ahead of the peak summer period.
Lufthansa joined other carriers this week in axing its schedule because the German airline doesn’t have the staffing to cope with demand. Lufthansa is scrapping some 900 flights in July, adding to snags at carriers from Air France-KLM to Ryanair to British Airways, which have all struggled to sustain operations.
The chaotic scenes playing out at airports from Ireland to Germany to Turkey represent a major setback for an industry hit particularly hard in the last two years of the pandemic.
Airlines collectively lost billions in revenue that forced drastic job cuts and government-orchestrated bailouts for some carriers. Adding to the upheaval are strikes sweeping the travel sector.
“We have to look sombrely at what the summer has in store for us and how we are going to cope,” EasyJet CEO Johan Lundgren said at an aviation conference in Paris this week. “We’ll need to come together and do the best we can.”
Disruptions have been particularly bad in the UK, though European hubs like Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris have also been plagued by delays and the fallout from strikes.
Overseas hubs have also been hit: Toronto Pearson International, Canada’s busiest airport, has experienced soaring wait times and flight cancellations due to labour shortages.
Air France-KLM was forced to cancel 85 flights in one day due to a strike at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, and many times that number due to snags at Schiphol.
Some of the worst bottlenecks played out during Queen Elizabeth's platinum jubilee celebrations in Britain last week that triggered an exodus of holidaymakers and tested airports’ ability to process arrivals. Ryanair called for help from British military personnel to deal with the disruptions.
The prospect of even more mayhem looms for travellers as the RMT union said it plans to lead a three-day work stoppage of 50,000 rail workers later this month after failing to reach an agreement with employers over pay.
Ryanair cabin crew may go on strike this summer in several European countries. The continent’s largest low-cost airline on Thursday walked away from talks with two Spanish unions, which have joined forces with worker organisations in Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal with a plan to prepare Europe-wide action if the airline doesn’t return to the table.
For the broader industry, the big question now is whether a sector that let go hundreds of thousands of workers at the height of the pandemic can bring them back to cope with the sharp uptick in consumer demand.
Many who left the industry and found jobs elsewhere are in no rush to return. A recent jobs fair organised by one major airport had hoped to attract 800 candidates. It got just four, said Olivier Jankovec, the head of airports lobby ACI Europe.
Bloomberg
