After the increase in air traffic after the corona pandemic from almost 0 to almost 90 percent, the industry could not deliver the usual reliability, robustness and punctuality, Spohr wrote in a letter from the group’s board of directors to customers. “We can only apologize to you for this and want to be completely honest: In the coming weeks, with further increases in passenger numbers, whether vacation or business trips, the situation will hardly improve in the short term.” Not only was the AUA mother Lufthansa missing, but there were still too many employees in the entire industry.
“A mess with an announcement”
At the beginning of the summer holidays, the Verdi union warned of a problem of violence. “We see that the frustration of the passengers is increasingly being taken out on employees who cannot do anything about the problems,” said Verdi aviation expert Sven Bergelin to the newspapers of the Funke media group. “There is a drastic increase in psychological and physical violence.” On peak days you have to take into account very long waiting times. The high sickness rate of 20 percent at German airports is also a problem.
“We are currently observing chaos with announcements at the airports.” Verdi had already warned in mid-2021 that these problems could arise due to the downsizing. “We see that 20 percent of the ground staff is missing, in absolute numbers that’s 5,000 people.” Verdi wants to explore solutions for the staff shortages in summer with the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings at a crisis summit.
New hires planned
Lufthansa boss Spohr emphasized: “Several thousand new hires are planned in Europe alone.” This increase in capacity will only stabilize the situation in winter. In the summer of 2023, the situation in global aviation should be much more reliable. In a letter to the workforce, Spohr admitted that Lufthansa had made mistakes in rescuing the company over the past two years. “Did we overdo it with the savings in one place or another under the pressure of the more than ten billion euros in losses caused by the pandemic? Certainly that too.”
The staff shortages at airlines and airports are exacerbated by high new corona infections. Airlines are canceling flights across Europe to relieve the overwhelmed system. Lufthansa alone is taking around 3,000 connections in the summer at the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich out of the flight plan. This should affect domestic German and European flights, but not the classic holiday destinations.
Despite the flight chaos, the tourism giant TUI is hoping for a holiday season close to the pre-crisis level. Demand is currently consistently above the level of 2019. “We are catching up rapidly and are more than confident that we will see summer business this year that will come close to 2019,” said TUI Germany boss Stefan Baumert. The German group is betting that most TUI vacationers will avoid flight chaos. “Despite all the challenges posed by staffing shortages in the industry, the holidays will go smoothly for the vast majority.” The flight schedule of the company’s own TUIfly machines will remain in place, as will the plans for additional reserve aircraft at peak times.
Hoping for help from abroad
Airlines, airports and ground service providers are counting on the fact that around 2,000 temporary workers from abroad can alleviate the worst shortage of staff for baggage handling, check-in and security checks for a limited period of around three months. However, most of them will probably not be used until August at the earliest – and thus too late for the holiday business at many airports, said Thomas Richter, head of the employers’ association of ground handling service providers in aviation (ABL), recently in a Reuters interview. “It doesn’t solve the problem, but it certainly helps.”
TUI is particularly interested in destinations around the Mediterranean – such as Mallorca and Turkey. The group appealed to vacationers to book a rental car with the trip, as bottlenecks are likely to lead to high prices. Anyone who only decides at the holiday destination “could go away empty-handed”. Inflation is still hardly reflected in package tours. There are still packages with prices from 2021. But if these quotas are soon exhausted, billing will be done on a daily basis. In addition, last-minute is no longer as cheap as it was before the pandemic – “higher prices of up to ten percent will not be uncommon”.
Source: Nachrichten
