ANALYSIS: Chaos Greets The Returning Air Traveler

After months of being told by airlines that it was safe to fly, in terms of virus infection risk, passengers are returning to air travel in droves. They are clearly ready to fly. But the air transport industry? Not so much.

After the UK government lifted all COVID-related travel restrictions in early spring, including quarantine rules and proof of vaccine or tests, the British public rushed to head for sunnier climes in southern Europe, the Mediterranean, Florida and wherever they could get a ticket. In the lead-up to Easter, a national holiday in the UK and across most of Europe, people were also eager to reunite with friends and family long separated by lockdowns and border closures. Ticket sales surged.

At far too many airports, however, the sharp climb in passenger numbers was not matched by available staff: Shortages among gate agents, security and immigration officers, bag handlers and flight crews quickly led to headline-grabbing chaos.

Some of the worst effects were seen at Manchester Airport in northern England, where deputy CEO Ken O’Toole told the BBC, “The speed and the scale of recovery has caught us and it has meant we are short-staffed at the moment.”

O’Toole became the airport’s spokesperson because CEO Karen Smart abruptly resigned mid-crisis to “spend more time with her family.” By that time, images were everywhere of tired, anxious passengers trapped in hours-long queues that snaked outside the terminal. Hundreds of people missed their flights or connections. Checked bags piled up, undelivered and untracked. Passengers and overwhelmed staff were seen in tears. Police officers and firefighters were drafted in to help deal with the mess.

While Manchester Airport was the most visible example of the industry’s inability to handle the one thing it had been pleading for—a return to normal passenger demand levels—it was not alone. Other UK airports, including London Heathrow, appeared to be caught off guard. UK airlines British Airways and LCC easyJet canceled dozens of flights, citing staff shortages.

It was as if they no longer recognized these strange creatures approaching en masse at their kiosks and gates, despite having sold them a right to board. 

Nor is the UK alone in failing to meet the public’s desire to fly, again with an equal industry capability to enable them to do so. With each spike in travel demand in the US over the past 12 months, airlines and airports have responded with snarls, delays and cancellations. 

In many cases, staff shortages—and the resulting flight cancellations—have been attributed to omicron virus infections. That’s an ongoing and difficult situation for airlines, airports and security agencies to manage. Clearly, they do not want infected staff knowingly turning up for work. But last-minute sick notifications burden a system that is highly dependent on schedules with hard-to-manage unpredictability.

Another problem exacerbating the issue, at least in the UK, is the extended times it is taking to get security clearances for new hires. Processes that used to take five or six weeks are reportedly taking months to complete.

IATA director general Willie Walsh, who previously ran British Airways parent company International Airlines Group, said he had “a lot of sympathy” for the situation that airlines and airports were dealing with.

But sympathy, apologies and resignations don’t deliver what the public wants and rightly deserves after some two years of being told that it was safe to travel. They should have every expectation of a ticket honored, a clean and hassle-free journey delivered, and an on-time arrival at their destination with their bag.

There are multiple culprits in the breaking of this chain. These include:

● Those governments that are lifting travel restrictions but are unable to handle the increase in demand for security clearances in a professional but timely manner; 

● Airports and municipal airport owners that are OK with cranking up airline fees to compensate for lost revenue over the pandemic, but are not properly communicating with their airline customers about their capabilities, and even worse, letting their leaders walk away rather than work through a crisis;

● Airline labor groups that are leveraging the surge in travel demand to demand unrealistic compensation hikes when industry debt and uncertainty are still highly oppressive; 

● Airlines that could not properly calculate their current and future staff resource needs through the early months of the pandemic and over-stripped without a plan about how to get skilled labor back online when they were needed; 

● Airlines that are not providing clear and transparent information to their customers when they can’t meet their travel expectations so that, at the very least, a passenger might be able to make alternative plans versus getting stuck in a long queue to nowhere.

In the much-awaited return of air travel demand, there’s an incompetence and lack of leadership being displayed in some corners across all industry stakeholders. The global air transport industry was devastated by the pandemic—something, like wars and terrorist attacks, that was completely out of its control. 

But how the industry handles its customers as they show a willingness to once again buy a ticket is very much its responsibility and one that it cannot afford to mess up. 

Listen to the editors discuss the chaos that met returning UK travelers on ATW’s new weekly podcast, Window Seat.