Due to staff shortages: the first airline is reducing the number of seats it offers
Created: 05/11/2022 11:21 am
By: Franziska Kaindl
After the corona pandemic, many airlines are suffering from staff shortages.
The British airline Easyjet is responding with an unusual method.
For a long time, travelers had to live with restrictions, and since the beginning of the corona pandemic, many have completely avoided driving away.
But the desire to vacation is returning and with full force: the easing of measures in many travel destinations has led to busy bookings again – flight tickets to Mallorca were sometimes available at ridiculous prices.
Lufthansa even expects that more people will fly on vacation with the company's airlines than ever before this summer.
As well as the trend is developing for the travel industry at the moment - not everyone is sufficiently prepared for it.
After two years of the pandemic, many airlines are suffering from staff shortages.
Many employees have resigned and retrained professionally.
Easyjet reduces occupancy – fewer seats available
In addition to the general shortage of staff, employees have recently had to stay at home due to a corona infection - the British airline Easyjet therefore canceled hundreds of 1,600 flights a day at the beginning of April.
As a result, the British low-cost airline has opted for an unusual approach: in the future , only 150 of the 156 seats
will be reservable in the airline's 60 Airbus A319 aircraft
.
This allows the airline
to fly with
just three flight attendants instead of four .
"This decision is an effective way to ensure more stability and flexibility in flight operations and thus protect against flight cancellations," said a company spokesman for the
editorial network Germany (RND)
.
Customers do not currently have to be afraid of flight cancellations - according to the company, the average 1,700 flights per day in the summer flight schedule can be carried out despite a lack of staff.
Due to staff shortages: chaos at British airports
According to media reports, passengers sometimes had to wait hours at the airports in Birmingham and Manchester on Monday (May 9) to be cleared at the security checkpoints.
There has been a hiring offensive at Birmingham Airport since the beginning of November - more than 40 percent of the employees had to be laid off during the pandemic.
However, a large number of these new employees are currently waiting for the necessary security clearances, as the AP news agency reports.
(fk)
