Summer holidaymakers are facing further potential flight misery as staffing issues continue to wreak havoc on the travel industry. Airport chaos over the half-term holiday saw passengers stuck in horrendous queues at Manchester, Gatwick, Bristol and Birmingham.
And as reported by the Mirror, hundreds of flights have been cancelled or delayed, with many people left stuck abroad and unable to return to work and school on time. BA, TUI and easyJet passengers were among those affected and the problems look set to continue over the summer.
Low levels of staffing are being blamed as airports struggle to fill low-paid positions such as baggage handler roles. One anonymous baggage handler told the BBC: "The problem is that during furlough some were asked to take on paid leave, maybe be laid off temporarily.
"'Yeah we're going to put you on hold, when everything comes back to normal you'll be the first person to be employed'. That went on.
"And people have financial commitments, so they moved on. I know one (baggage handler) who has ended up being a fireman.
"Another colleague, he is running his own restaurant. Some decided to go back to their country, some are working as plumbers and electricians. I can tell you, about three days ago one of those people was travelling through the airport and he was saying it's the best decision of his life."
For security reasons, the recruitment process means positions are hard to fill quickly. References need to be gathered from previous employers which can be time-consuming for people who have worked several jobs during the pandemic.
Airlines for Europe, Europe’s largest airline association, expects the problems impacting airports and airlines in the UK and Europe to persist “for a good chunk of the summer season” the Financial Times reports. The group, whose members include EasyJet, British Airways owner IAG and Ryanair, blamed a series of factors for the chaos.
These include staff shortages, long waits for new staff to pass background checks and also higher than normal sickness rates. While pandemic social distancing restrictions have been lifted in the UK, coronavirus is still infecting people and forcing them to isolate, meaning whittled down workforces are further impacted.
Another factor is Brexit, which has meant many Europeans who may have come to the UK looking for work are now no longer allowed to do so. Over the weekend Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan urged the Government to relax visa rules to deal with the staff shortages at airports.
“The government should recognise that there are shortages in this occupation, of those who work in aviation,” the mayor told BBC1’s Sunday Morning. What you can do very easily is to make sure those who were in those jobs before, who’ve gone back to their country of origin in the EU, are encouraged to come back."
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps denied that the issues were Brexit related, even though problems at the UK's airports are more severe and wide ranging than those in any EU country. He told interviewer Sophie Raworth: “The answer can’t always be to reach for the lever marked ‘More immigration’.”
“We are seeing the same problems across Europe. If it were only to do with Brexit, then there wouldn’t be a problem at Schiphol (airport in Amsterdam) or elsewhere. So that clearly can’t be true."
In a proactive move to deal with the issues, British Airways recently decided to cut 8,000 roundtrips from its March to October timetable. EasyJet made a similar move as it cancelled several hundred flights in April and grounded dozens in May, as well as a cancelling a further 80 on Sunday.
Meanwhile, TUI announced that it was cancelling a number of flights from Manchester until the end of June. BA points out that the challenges facing the aviation industry since the coronavirus pandemic broke out are enormous in their scale.
Globally the industry lost more than £145bn and an estimated four million jobs since the start of the pandemic, with the knock on impact on staffing levels still being felt to this day. EasyJet alone cut 1,400 jobs at the beginning of 2021, while BA axed 10,000 during the pandemic, eventually rehiring about 4,000 as of last summer.
A BA spokesperson said that ramping up capacity from 30 to 80 per cent in a short space of time was "always going to be challenging, but this is being faced by the industry and not just us".
They added: "The past few weeks have been challenging for the entire industry and at British Airways we're completely focused on three priorities: our customers, supporting the biggest recruitment drive in our history and increasing our operational resilience.
"We've taken action to reduce our schedule to help provide certainty for our customers and are giving them maximum flexibility to either rebook with us or another airline as close to their original departure time as possible, or to receive a full refund."
An easyJet spokesperson said: "easyJet is operating around 1,650 daily flights across the network, carrying around a quarter of a million people each day."
