The crying came, worryingly, not from a passenger but from the pilot of the Wizz Air plane and was recorded in a TikTok video that went viral. Now, with the chaos prevailing in the industry, the heads of the airlines and the airports seem to be victims of the circumstances of both passengers and pilots. So where are the problems – and will they be resolved in time for the summer? Looking back on their situation two years ago, airlines can welcome the current turmoil: back then, with the coronavirus sweeping the world, most had not flown a passenger for months. More airlines were expected to be lost than for a speedy recovery. Even in early 2022, many leisure trips were excluded from the Omicron variant. However, demand for holidays and flights has skyrocketed: airlines have returned to around 85% of 2019 flight capacity across Europe. However, one industry that lost many of its staff – thousands were laid off, others drifted into other sectors, some after Brexit – has yet to replace them completely. Discussions about where the fault lies have sparked government and industry meetings. Were the leave programs generous enough? Were travel restrictions lifted all of a sudden? Were the airlines too slow to respond? EasyJet and BA aircraft parked in Gatwick last year. Photo: Peter Nicholls / Reuters Passengers tend to blame the airline with which they booked – and much of that responsibility falls on easyJet. Britain’s largest airline canceled hundreds of flights, many shortly before departure, overturning the plans of tens of thousands of passengers – again. A letter withering from the French pilots’ union has accused executives in Luton of presiding over “unprecedented chaos” – canceling viable flights and waiting too long for others to be abolished. EasyJet may blame external factors – chaos at Schiphol in Amsterdam, air traffic control issues, and even horrible weather – but rival Ryanair, which flies more flights now than in 2019, has moved on. Like British Airways, easyJet has also suffered the self-inflicted chaos of a huge IT failure. BA, however, chose to cut them hard and early, canceling many summer flights after a terrible Easter instead of risking more last minute failures. EasyJet has not yet followed suit. Some sources say the board, headed by President Stephen Hester, could become spasmodic. CEO Johan Lundgren, who pledged to use data to reduce downtime and cancellations when he took office in 2017, and CEO Peter Bellew, formerly of Ryanair, would likely be first in line. A spokesman said: “Since April, easyJet has operated approximately 1,700 flights and carries approximately 250,000 customers daily. However, the continuing demanding operating environment continues to have an impact and we regret the cancellations in recent days. “EasyJet remains fully focused on our daily operations and continues to monitor it very closely and will not hesitate to take additional measures as required.” The airline claims that it has no immediate recruitment issues and maintains a similar level of crew on standby as before Covid. However, it removed rows of seats from its A319 to reduce the number of crew needed on each flight. Despite low pay and anti-social hours, the perceived charm of cabin crew jobs still brings in many candidates. (This is less true for security and ground service jobs.) Across the industry, however, recruits waited months to clear their history checks. EasyJet has suffered particularly at Gatwick, where it is by far the largest airline. The airport, which was destroyed during Covid, prompted many employees to be fired. those faced with wage freezes and an uncertain future. This year, the Unite union earned a staggering 10% pay rise from DHL, which it has outsourced to easyJet partners, highlighting the shift in power in the job market. CEO Johan Lundgren pledged to reduce cancellations at easyJet when he took office in 2017. Photo: Antonio Olmos / the Observer Much of the customer experience is based on such contractors, check-in and baggage handling. Delays and cancellations can be caused by the negative consequences of a problem at a different airport – fueling what was at risk of becoming an inappropriate game of responsibility. Difficulties may fall, especially for low-cost, low-cost airlines: late boarding means that flights are not limited to the crew, whose hours are limited for safety reasons, but also to outside staff who can to serve many airlines. They can escalate further when, for example, the bags of passengers who miss a flight due to safety congestion have to be removed from the aircraft. And they need more staff to help those trapped. Heathrow’s boss, John Holland-Kay, has warned that it could take up to 18 months for the system to be fully staffed. Individual companies and airports that claim to be confident in 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 had almost gone bankrupt could barely afford to hire redundant staff – rather than the kind of long-term contracts that would attract many into a tight labor market. Meanwhile, perennial summer stings, air traffic control strikes, are likely to be repeated. Even without them, an ominous Eurocontrol note last week warned that many air navigation services did not have the capacity for scheduled flights and that the next six weeks would be “extremely challenging for many airports”. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary was unusually generous with the easyJet upheaval: “We all make mistakes and we are all human” BA dived in late April and reduced its capacity by 10% by the end of October, about 100 flights a day. Should easyJet cancel more flights? Airlines and travel companies, thirsty for revenue, have long noticed the huge desperate demand from customers who desperately wanted to travel abroad this summer, regardless of cost. Some continued to use vouchers or refunds from trips booked until 2019. Likewise, many fear that customers will be tightening their belts when it comes to winter and booking for 2023, when huge energy bills will widen the cost-of-living crisis. Higher wages and fuel costs will boost air fares this year. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has been unabashedly generous about the easyJet turmoil in recent interviews, even though his own airline trumpeted its zero cancellations last month: “We all make mistakes and we are all human.” His own airline is threatened by Spanish strikes, although Ryanair, which is heavily based in Stansted and has few flights to Schiphol, has avoided some of easyJet’s worst nightmares. For some, easyJet’s troubles are just the bad luck that can happen to any airline, magnified by its size, the state of the industry and the rush of half a year. Other carriers have no immunity: KLM flew empty planes back to the Schiphol junction instead of increasing congestion. Lufthansa canceled 900 summer flights last week. Tui, BA and Wizz Air were canceled late. And as Wizz boss József Váradi put it last week, he was causing “a huge reputation and financial loss” to tired staff – as he saw a 100 100m bonus linked to the share price fall. Can it be fixed in the six short weeks before the summer holidays? More staff is constantly coming to the industry and security clearance is accelerating. Covid restrictions may be further relaxed. Border queues for Britons holding blue passports after Brexit may be reduced. But do not rely on it. As some of the insiders suggest, passengers may also have forgotten how gloomy and crowded a rugged airport usually looks. It’s the price of the holiday. Welcome back.
