Many of the travel restrictions imposed over the past two years have now been lifted and people are making up for lost time visiting relatives, traveling for work or taking vacation, especially during the Easter holiday. But airlines and airports are struggling to ramp up efforts, as labor shortages hamper efforts to hire new workers and Covid-19 infection sidelines many existing employees.
The airport in Austin, Texas, has been overrun in recent weeks, with long lines for security, returning rental cars late last month. In the UK, British Airways has made cuts to its flight schedule until May, while London Heathrow Airport says it is striving to hire 12,000 workers. And in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, the airport expects Thursday – the day before the four-day Easter holiday – to be the busiest day for domestic travel since March 2020, a major challenge as 20% of its staff lose work each day due to Covid-19. .
Mary Beth Wood, 65, said as she queued up for security who occasionally snuck out the door at Sydney Airport on Wednesday afternoon.
Airlines have spent much of the pandemic laying off or furloughing thousands of workers and grounding planes. Many pilots—who once considered their dream job—have had to find work elsewhere, from grocery stores to farms where they operate heavy machinery rather than giant planes. Now, the aviation sector is competing for workers with other industries, from truck driving to hospitality, which are also seeing increased demand.
“Unfortunately, this is an industry where you can’t ramp up overnight. It takes some time to make sure you have trained staff,” said Subhas Menon, General Manager of Asia Pacific Airlines.
The International Air Transport Association, the airline industry group, warned this month that airports, governments and other infrastructure providers must prepare for a massive surge in passenger numbers as the recovery in air travel accelerates. Although international travel has been slower to recover, the latest IATA figures show domestic travel in February was up 61% compared to last year and was only 22% below 2019 levels.
In the US, airlines have had nearly a year to adjust to the growing passenger volume, but even so passengers have faced periodic crises as they are overwhelmed by spring break travel. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said pilots at New York’s LaGuardia Airport experienced wait times of between 40 and 50 minutes Tuesday morning amid large numbers of passengers.
Some US airlines have said they do not have enough staff to recover quickly when bad weather or other disruptions occur. Alaska Air Group Inc. said. It will cut 2% of flights through the end of June as it looks to catch up with pilot training. JetBlue Airways Corp. said it will cut its schedule by 8%-10% in May and throughout the summer to alleviate hiring pressures.
JetBlue told crew members in a memo over the weekend that its efforts to count personnel, equipment, aircraft availability and airport infrastructure to plan its schedule have been turned upside down.
“Covid has thrown all kinds of twists and turns into this process,” President Joanna Giragati wrote.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said in an interview Tuesday that Delta has hired about 15,000 new employees since the beginning of last year, in part to replace those who have left during the pandemic. “I feel good about our career situation,” he said. “We’ve come a long way from this.”
The UK has seen a boom in aviation after it became the first country in the world to remove all travel restrictions related to Covid. In northern England, Manchester Airport recently issued an apology to travelers after hours of delays.
A staff shortage there has meant that not all security lanes can open, and an executive has warned passengers that they should prepare to wait 90 minutes over the next few months while new staff are being hired and each subject to a government scrutiny.
Charlie Cornish, Chief Executive Officer of Manchester Airports Group, said: “The simple fact is that we do not currently have the number of staff we need to provide the level of service our passengers deserve. We are doing this in one of the most challenging labor markets we have seen, with competition from many other companies finding herself in the same position.”
In Asia, airlines face other challenges — rerouting some of their flights around Russian airspace in the wake of that country’s invasion of Ukraine, adding hours to flight times, increasing fuel costs, and making flights less attractive to travelers.
Japan Airlines flights connecting Haneda to Europe now use a northern route — flying over Alaska, Greenland and Iceland — that adds up to six hours to flight time from Helsinki. A spokesperson for Japan Airlines said the company has kept the ticket price unchanged so far, and starting April 19, there are plans to use a southern route to take advantage of the tailwind to save energy and time.
In Australia, which reopened its borders to tourists in February, crowds at the country’s airports have dominated local news for the past several days. Qantas Airways Ltd. , Australia’s main airline, has shifted some staff who do not normally work at the airport to help direct passengers and help with baggage, while Sydney Airport said it is deploying top executives at stations to help manage the lines.
The airport security contractor has been recruiting more than 100 security screening jobs since December, but has struggled to find enough workers, a problem in Australia after nearly two years of strict border closures that have hampered immigration. The airport said 50 new screening staff will gradually become available in the coming weeks, but the process of training new staff will take two months.
Jeff Colbert, CEO of the airport, said in a TV interview, “This industry was completely smashed and we were building from the ground up. We can’t just get people into roles because we are all fighting over the same resources.”
What adds to the problems is that passengers also suffer from rust when it comes to passing through security, said Alan Joyce, Qantas CEO. Before the pandemic, 10% of passengers needed to be rechecked while going through security, but that number is now as high as 30%, Mr. Joyce said. This adds 45 seconds per person, which adds up if thousands of people are traveling.
When the security line started to move at Sydney airport, Ms Wood, who was carrying only carry-on baggage, said she wasn’t worried about missing her nearly 90-minute domestic flight to Melbourne, given that she had arrived on time and she had passed. . About an hour and a half until boarding.
Ms. Wood, who was visiting Australia from California, said: “We’ve learned to go with the flow. As long as we get on time, we’ll be fine. If we miss our flight, we’ll be in a high level of terror.”
This story was published from the news agency’s feed without modifications to the text
