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Lack of staff is hampering air traffic: there is a risk of long waiting times and flight cancellations - at Pentecost and in summer

2022-06-05T04:28:48.323Z


Lack of staff is hampering air traffic: there is a risk of long waiting times and flight cancellations - at Pentecost and in summer Created: 06/05/2022 06:21 By: Christoph Klaucke There is a risk of long waiting times and flight cancellations at the airports due to a lack of staff. © Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa At Pentecost, passengers experience a foretaste of the forthcoming holiday flight summer.


Lack of staff is hampering air traffic: there is a risk of long waiting times and flight cancellations - at Pentecost and in summer

Created: 06/05/2022 06:21

By: Christoph Klaucke

There is a risk of long waiting times and flight cancellations at the airports due to a lack of staff.

© Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa

At Pentecost, passengers experience a foretaste of the forthcoming holiday flight summer.

For the restart after Corona, there is a lack of staff in all corners of the system.

Frankfurt – Long waiting times and flight cancellations seem unavoidable: At Whitsun and in the summer, the lack of staff is hampering air traffic.

And airports and airlines don't even talk about it any more: Holiday trips by plane become an ordeal for passengers and providers alike in summer.

The industry messes up the restart in the first reasonably pandemic-free season since Corona 2019.

Shortage of staff in air traffic: During the pandemic, employees looked for other jobs

The reason is a lack of staff at various points in the travel process: from passenger control to aircraft handling to flight attendants, the people who looked for other jobs during the pandemic are missing everywhere.

“Across all locations, the service providers involved in handling passengers are missing around 20 percent of the ground staff compared to the pre-Corona period.

This can lead to bottlenecks at peak times, especially at check-in, when loading suitcases and at the aviation security checkpoint," says Ralph Beisel, Managing Director of the Airport Association ADV.

The airport works councils estimate the additional need for 5,500 people nationwide.


Due to a lack of staff: Easyjet relies on a clever trick

In the UK, the government and airline industry are blaming each other for the travel chaos that has already led to hundreds of flight cancellations and overcrowded passenger terminals.

Here, too, there is a lack of trained personnel, who have left the industry en masse in the past two years.

It is currently almost impossible to find staff, a representative of the GMB union told the BBC.

In Germany, many employees have migrated to logistics, says Thomas Richter from the ABL association of ground handlers.


Due to the lack of flight attendants, low-cost airline Easyjet had already felt compelled to take a drastic step: In the British sub-fleet, the rear row of seats will be removed from all Airbus A319 aircraft this summer.

Six fewer seats mean that the airline only has to use three instead of four flight attendants in the cabin for the remaining 150 passengers according to the applicable safety codes.


Frankfurt and Amsterdam cancel flights: problems expected over the summer

Due to the increased share of tourism in the traffic volume, a lot is brewing, especially at the weekends in the German terminals.

There are already long queues through the halls in Düsseldorf, Berlin and Frankfurt.

In the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, the main problem is with the passenger controls.

The Verdi union expects ongoing problems over the summer, as the tense personnel situation is physically and mentally stressing the employees.

There is already a sickness rate of more than 20 percent, says Verdi expert Özay Tarim.

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Like its permanent competitor Amsterdam, Frankfurt has announced that it will thin out the flight plan to relieve the system, i.e. cancel individual connections.

Of course, in close consultation with the airlines, who are anything but happy about it and are demanding compensation.

The Dutch KLM has meanwhile even stopped selling tickets to get air for rebookings.


Demand for air travel unbroken despite the Ukraine war and record inflation

Despite the Ukraine war and record inflation, there is an enormous need to catch up, especially among private travellers.

According to Eurocontrol, there were already more than 28,100 flights a day in Europe last week, which corresponds to almost 86 percent of the pre-crisis level.

In the summer, for example, the Lufthansa Group wants to fly 95 percent of the pre-crisis level again on European short-haul routes, and the direct flight subsidiary Eurowings is even offering more seats than in 2019.

It doesn't fit the picture at all that French air traffic control will have to reduce its capacity by the end of July due to the introduction of a new system and flights will have to be relocated to German airspace.

The Frankfurt airport operator Fraport cut around 4,000 jobs during the crisis and also unexpectedly lost ground staff who found better jobs elsewhere.

Finding 1,000 new people in a largely empty Rhine-Main job market is becoming an almost impossible challenge.

More than 100 new people a month are hardly possible, says Fraport boss Stefan Schulte.

Christian Ebner

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-06-05

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