On the Gatwick runway at the beginning of a half-family, thousands of miles from a coastal destination in Cyprus where their plane was about to land, a shout of countless passengers filled the cabin: “I don’t need this.” Out of my control, completely out of control. my control. ”
The shout came, alarmingly, not from a passenger but from a pilot of a Wizz Air plane and was filmed on video on TikTok, which went viral. Now that the chaos has gripped the industry, airline and airport bosses seem to be mistaken for victims of the circumstances, as are passengers and pilots. So where are the problems – and will they be fixed in time for the summer?
Looking back on its situation two years ago, airlines could welcome the current turbulence: when the coronavirus swept the world, most had not flown with passengers in months. More airlines were focused on death than on rapid recovery. Even in early 2022, many leisure trips were excluded from the Omicron variant.
But the demand for holidays and flights has grown: airlines have returned to about 85% of the capacity of flights for 2019 around Europe. However, an industry that lost many of its employees – thousands laid off, others recruited in other sectors, some went after Brexit – has not yet completely replaced them.
Discussions about where the mistake is have revived meetings between government and industry. Were the holiday schemes generous enough? Were travel restrictions lifted too abruptly? Did the aviation companies react too slowly?
EasyJet and BA planes parked in Gatwick last year. Photo: Peter Nichols / Reuters
Passengers tend to blame the airline they booked with – and much of that is easyJet’s fault. The largest British carrier canceled hundreds of flights, long before departure, changing the plans of tens of thousands of passengers – again. A wilting letter from the French pilots’ union accused Luton’s managers of waging “unprecedented chaos” – canceling viable flights and waiting too long to dump others.
EasyJet may blame external factors – the chaos at Amsterdam’s Schiphol, air traffic control problems, and even strange weather – but rival Ryanair, which operates more flights now than in 2019, has flown. Like British Airways, easyJet has suffered chaos from a huge IT failure.
However, BA chose to cut hard and early, canceling many summer flights after a tough Easter instead of risking more last-minute failures. EasyJet has not yet followed suit.
Some sources say the board, led by President Stephen Hester, may be shaking. CEO Johan Lundgren, who promised to use data to reduce interruptions and cancellations when he took office in 2017, and chief operating officer Peter Bellew, a former Ryanair chief, are likely to be first on the line of fire.
A spokesman said: “Since April, easyJet has operated about 1,700 flights and transported about 250,000 customers every day. However, the ongoing challenging operating environment continues to have an impact and we regret the cancellation in recent days. EasyJet remains absolutely focused on our daily work and continues to monitor this very closely and will not hesitate to take further action if necessary.
The airline claims that there are no direct problems with hiring staff and keeps a similar level of crew on standby as before Covid. However, he removed rows of seats from his A319 to reduce the number of crew needed for each flight.
Despite low pay and anti-social hours, the perceived brilliance of cabin crew jobs still brings many candidates. (This is less true for security and groundhandling jobs.) Still, new recruits in the industry are waiting months to clear up inspections.
EasyJet suffered particularly in Gatwick, the largest airline. The airport, partially conserved during Covid, made many employees laid off; those who remained faced a wage freeze and an uncertain future. This year, Unite won a staggering 10% pay rise from easyJet’s outsourced landlord, DHL, highlighting a shift in power in the labor market.
CEO Johan Lundgren promised to reduce cancellations at easyJet when he took office in 2017. Photo: Antonio Olmos / The Observer
Much of the customer experience relies on such contractors when checking in and handling luggage. Delays and cancellations can be caused by the effects of a problem at a different airport – fueling what risks becoming an indecent accusation game.
Snowballs can be difficult, especially for low-cost budget airlines: delayed boarding means a delay in schedules not only for crew whose hours are limited for safety reasons, but also for outsourced staff who can serve several airlines. They can further escalate when, for example, bags of passengers who have missed a flight due to traffic jams have to be removed from the aircraft. More staff are needed to help those blocked.
Heathrow chief John Holland-Kay warned it could take 18 months for the system to be fully completed. Some companies and airports, which say they are confident in their own recruitment, are still questioning the rest of the system that supports upward flights. And analysts are wondering about sustainability: an industry that has nearly gone bankrupt can barely afford to hire a surplus of staff – and not in the form of long-term contracts that would lure many into the tight labor market.
Meanwhile, years of summer stings and air traffic control strikes are likely to recur. Even without them, an ominous note from Eurocontrol last week warned that several air navigation services did not have the capacity for the planned flights and that the next six weeks would be “extremely challenging for many airports”.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary was unusually generous about easyJet’s turmoil: “We all make mistakes and we’re all human.”
BA took a step at the end of April and reduced its capacity by 10% by the end of October, about 100 flights a day. Should easyJet cancel more flights? Revenue-hungry airlines and travel companies have long noticed a huge hold on demand from customers who are desperate to travel abroad this summer, no matter the cost. Some still used vouchers or travel refunds booked back in 2019.
Similarly, many fear that customers will tighten their belts when it comes to winter and reservations for 2023, when huge energy bills will increase the cost of living crisis. Higher wage and fuel costs will boost airfare prices this year.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has been unusually generous about easyJet’s turmoil in recent interviews, even as his own airline trumpeted its zero cancellations last month: “We all make mistakes and we’re all human.” His own airline is threatened by Spanish strikes, although Ryanair, largely based in Stansted and with few flights to Schiphol, has avoided some of easyJet’s worst nightmares.
For some, the difficulty of easyJet is simply the bad luck that can befall any airline, increased by its size, the state of the industry and the rush of half a term. Other carriers are not immune: KLM flies empty planes back to its Schiphol center instead of increasing congestion; Lufthansa canceled 900 summer flights last week; Tui, BA and Wizz Air have been canceled late. And as Wizz boss Josef Varadi told the weary staff last week – as he watched the £ 100 million share bonus run off – it was “causing huge reputational and financial damage”.
Can it be fixed in the six short weeks before summer vacation? More and more employees are joining the industry all the time, and security checks are accelerating. Covid’s limitations can make it even easier. Border queues for Britons holding post-Brexit passports are likely to decline.
But don’t bet on it. As some acquaintances suggest, passengers may also have forgotten how gloomy and crowded the airport usually looks during the peak season. This is the price of the holiday. Welcome back.
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