flyme2

There were and are certainly a number of unforeseen difficulties in returning air travel to normal. I just see the contingency and recovery plans as having been more than a little shortsighted. I know that some of my colleagues in the hotel industry that managed to keep their doors open during the darkest hours of the pandemic used a revolving layoff strategy that kept most key personnel on their roster by systematically laying them off for a requisite period, then rehiring them, repeating the process as necessary.

photojojo

Oh shoot, my bad. Looks like everyone found the articles though.

I can't fathom how 80 airlines are going to agree on how to do this in the first place, or is the airport board going to do the math for them and tell everyone how many tickets they can sell? If so then what are the penalties?

Going to go lurk in the BA forum.

flyme2

Perhaps it's a Machiavellian plot by Getlink to promote Eurostar.

Goodoldflyer

How can you blame the airlines if it's the AIRPORTS who are causing part of the problem?

Mwenenzi

UK forum thread (as not direct airline related)--->https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/u-k-...ll-handle.html

Dawgfan6291

eh. couple things, not to be political, this is a European thing. You sometimes see stuff like that over there just because their governments operate differently.

but to a point this is 100% on the airlines. There is no law that keeps Delta from bring its ramp operation in-house at LHR and paying (much) better wages to attract talent. A lot of the issues over there are the same flavor of issues we are seeing here with things like catering operations and even ramp operations in smaller stations. Airlines use to do that kind of stuff in-house and are now outsourcing to the lowest possible vendor they can find. Then when they can't get people to work in .... labor conditions with little benefits and barely minimum wages, CEO get on earning calls, toss their hands the in air and go "well we just can't seem to find workers, we don't know what to do."
My understanding of what is happening at LHR (and AMS) is that the ground operators can't find anyone to work. Mostly due to the ground operators paying cents on the dollar for what it would have paid when the work was in-house at the airline. So employees are looking at working at the local McDonals for about the same money for WAY less work than tossing bags.

So I have a feeling Delta could probably, for its operations, fix a lot of this in Europe if they really wanted. They just don't want to because it will cost a point of point of point of a margin point. Same reason why they outsourced Europe call center work to whoever AF/KL use and those agents for a lot of more complicated issues are just slightly above useless.

I can't say i feel terribly bad for the airlines on this. As I have said before I am very sympathetic about the brain drain issue but the "we cant find staff" or what's happening more "our vendors that we whipsaw constantly can't see to find staff" is just management not being willing to spend money to fix the probably and Wall Street being happily willing the punish any management that really tries. I can guaranty that if Delta were to say "screw it, we are bring operations in house in places like LHR/AMS/CDG/FCO/FRA" some of the first questions you would see on the next quarterly call or investor presentation would be some MBA analyst asking why and wouldn't that money be better spent on things like stock buy backs or dividend increases.

Goodoldflyer

The airlines can't do border control and security, and those are also parts of the problem, so it is partly on the airport or government.

People seem to want to swing the narrative based on their politics, but the fact is that we went from "societal shutdown with nobody traveling", to "everyone has the means and desire to travel" very quickly. There were bound to be some disruptions.

We, as a society, couldn't keep the airlines functioning at 100% capacity during the pandemic. It would have made no sense to do that. There are plenty of people who were close enough to retirement that they could afford to take a buyout. Or those who just simply decided to retire. Or those who just decided that they don't like working any more and life is too short. That's their right, whatever.

I can't condone airlines scheduling flights they can't staff. But I likewise can't say that it's entirely their fault that airports can't hire security personnel. Workers are doing what makes sense to them. And at least part of the problem was governments throwing out money with random abandon during the pandemic. It would have been a lot worse had they not done that, and if the world had gone into a financial meltdown with all the airlines and airports closing. Instead, we have a lot of people feeling flush enough not to work, ready to travel, and not enough workers to staff airlines and airports. Other industries are going to have the same problem. These are first world problems that will no doubt take some time to sort out.

Dawgfan6291

Sort of. In a lot of cases.....that is also to a point on the airlines because they are unwilling to pay the governments more fees to pay for these people

Granted we can really get down the political road here because I am a huge believe that at lot of these jobs, at least in the US, should be private like they were pre-9/11 and have in some airports gone back to private because the .gov couldn't get the staff needed.

but overall I agree. Its not just on the airlines
I don't disagree one bit on the bold. I expected some hick ups for sure. Also, as I said, i totally get the brain drain factor.
but a lot of this staffing stuff has been a boiling pot since the bankruptcy days in the US and the US airlines going into "OUTSOURCE IT ALL!" mode and now, as I said, they can't get vendors that they have been whipsawing for years to hire staff, because those vendors don't want to raise cost because they know if they do, the airline(s) will whipsaw them out of existence. On top of that the pilot and mechanic shortage has been a well known coming issue for years that the airlines wanted to do jack diddly dog .... about and now they are where they are. COVID just finally got the pot boiling over but in a lot of cases, this has been a long time coming.

Don't disagree with any of this either.
But as I said above, airlines have a lot of big staffing issues that were coming and were well known pre-COVID. COVID just got the party started a little early.

But you still aren't seeing US kids going to be pilots or mechanics in enough numbers. Till the airlines do something about it and do something big enough to get kids to go to school for, its going to be a problem. COVID just cause the bubble to pop a little earlier.

but I can tell you as an A&P, the shortage of us has been a thing. Airline management has just kicked the can down the road and as I said, to a point, Wall street would have punished executives that did something to deal with it. My understanding from pilot friends is the same. From what I gather the airlines were running past the red line in a lot of cases pre-COVID. Now they don't have the warm bodies to cover the crazy overtime they were use to having covered.

FWIW outside of the airline industry its way worse. Speaking on the mechanic side, I can tell you right now that if other countries start having the shortages of mechanics the US is seeing, US airline are going to be forced to bring maintenance back in-house because they wont be able to find people to do it. US MRO's like HAECO Americas, AAR, etc are struggling badly to find people and have been down sizing their operations. If that happens, its going to be even more of a cluster than it already is.

I honestly feel bad for a lot of airline leaders right now to a point. They are stuck between a rock (staffing issues) and a hard place (Wall street and large investment companies unwilling to take the margin hit to fix it). Wouldn't be surprised if some our secretly hoping for a slight recession just to suppress demand by 10-15% for the short term so they can get their house in order.

sorry, long winded rant but i really enjoy talking about this kind of stuff.

BER Flyer

This does not apply to AMS for most parts. KLM does most ground work incl. baggage handling "in house", and these employees are paid nowhere near "cents on the Dollar" and they do have travel priviliges. But the greater AMS area has an unemployment rate of 1.25% ( 2nd quarter ). On 100.000 people listed as looking for a job there 133.000 open positions. They really struggle to find personal. Plus to pass the security clearance needed to work in the secure area of the airport requires you to live a couple of years in the Netherlands ( iirc 8 years ) so the solution "bring in some immigrants from turkey" doesn't work either.

Dawgfan6291

I thought AMS was having issues because KLM was trying to outsource ground operations? Or was I completely wrong on that?

also interesting on the airport clearance part. I don't remember how long you have to live in the US to be able to get a SIDA badge but I don't think its that long. I know you have to have a clean 10 year criminal background though.

flyerCO

This isn't the government imposing limits. This is the private company that manages LHR. Big difference.

ohhleary

Not surprising given what I witnessed at LHR yesterday. During boarding, my VA crew was very apologetic about the in-airport experience for check-in and security. The Main Cabin/Economy check-in line at the DL/VA area at T3 snaked out of its normal queue into another section of the airport, as did security.

There was no wait at all for Sky Priority/Premium/Upper Class check-in, and I was one of two people in line for Fast Track security via the Virgin Clubhouse. Being a PM saved me hours of misery yesterday.

Altaflyer

If the bottleneck is security checks then maybe the gov't can staff that function with military or other personnel to get the checks done and get things moving.....

Goodoldflyer

Great idea. But the workers would likely strike against that, too.

jamesteroh

Little OT, but flying out of LHR in a week and a half in Delta one as a diamond. Anyone used Upper Class security lately? I've been told to arrive three hours early for my flight but not sure if that's necessary with upper class.

I wish they still had fast track for arrivals.