Originally Posted by
thijsseh
What really upsets me is that LHR and all other UK airports have been moaning for months that all sorts of Covid related restrictions were killing their business, the businesses around their airports etc etc. As soon as restrictions were lifted, the passengers who they so badly wanted to use their airports came back.
Is that a surprise?? It would appear that they had not done any scenario planning on how to handle the step change in passenger volumes.
I struggle to have any sympathy for LHR, LGW etc etc (including AMS by the way). When you lay off 10’s of thousands of people, you better have a plan to get them back. Or do you expect them to sit at home, going hungry and waiting to be recalled? Come on!
To be fair to the UK aviation industry, they experienced over a year of insane travel restrictions (it was quite clear COVID was spreading across borders irrespective of aviation being closed). Furlough finished circa November 2021 yet travel restrictions continued. Then circa March 2022, the government removed all travel restrictions pretty much overnight whilst also having recently introduced counter terrorism checks on airside pass holders. Depending on the role, many aviation jobs take several months to train and certify staff. So in March, the government suddenly announced aviation should resume without giving thought to the whole recertification of staff and CTC checks.
Whilst I sympathize with your frustrations, I am sure the shareholders of BA, MAG, Swissport etc would have been mightily upset if these organisations had maintained a full staff throughout COVID (or when no furlough was available) waiting and waiting for the government to remove its insane travel restrictions and restart aviation.