Originally Posted by
capedreamer
So AC is at 97% of 2019 staffing levels while operating 80% of its 2019 schedule. I would love to see a similar figure for the airport staff vs. traffic comparison, because this only deepens the mystery for me. Whenever I've looked into why airports are such a mess, I've come across hand-wavy articles citing staff shortages as the main reason. But exactly how short are we at this point?
I think this came up in another thread, but here's an example.
A plane arrives in YYZ from FRA. A gate agent meets it. They unload passengers in 30 minutes, and then the GA goes to the podium to assist others before boarding.
A plane arrives in YYZ from FRA. A GA meets it. Due to metering, it takes 2 hours to unload all passengers. The next flight is delayed because of this metering, and so a lot more passengers need help rebooking their missed connections. But the GA is busy who would normally help deal with the 10 pax with issues, and now there are 100 pax with issues.
I'm definitely not saying AC has no blame here, but it's not hard to see how a 2 hour unloading delay (and I've been on one of those) could completely overwhelm customer service. Well, maybe not one of those, but if there are ten 2 hour unloading delays all at the same time, we now have 1000 pax with issues.