Queue chaos at Airports
Discussion
Tyre Smoke said:
Blackpuddin said:
If they paid enough wages they wouldn't be having such trouble recruiting staff. They won't do that so travellers pay in money, time and stress. Not sure why they can't entice more new staff by offering a hiring bonus eg double salary for first three or six months.
Jesus wept. And where do you think the funding for this 'double pay' will come from?
Listening to R4 this morning and it had the story of someone who was going on holiday with TUI (Manchester) 2 hour queue to get inside the building.
Then a few more hours to check in and security. Then flight delayed 4 hours (delayed as we find out no pilots).
Shops etc all closed by 6pm as no staff.
No drinks or water available at all….. not to buy etc.
people going solo couldn’t leave the queue as they then lost position in the queues.
Then went to gate no staff there then a few more hours to find all had a text and email flight and holiday cancelled no crew. Please go home. There were no TUI staff and it was the police who had to read out a TUI statement and then guide them out of the airport.
Then an expert on the industry came on and issued reasons
1. Lots of previous redundancies
2. Very hard to recruit as people giving reasons that it’s not reliable work / lockdowns travel restrictions etc.
3. It’s not as glamorous anymore
4. Pay.
5. Trying to recoup profits from lost travel years.
However warning this isn’t going away here or other countries.
Given we’ve solved the lorry driver shortage surely this then is easy to solve?
Then a few more hours to check in and security. Then flight delayed 4 hours (delayed as we find out no pilots).
Shops etc all closed by 6pm as no staff.
No drinks or water available at all….. not to buy etc.
people going solo couldn’t leave the queue as they then lost position in the queues.
Then went to gate no staff there then a few more hours to find all had a text and email flight and holiday cancelled no crew. Please go home. There were no TUI staff and it was the police who had to read out a TUI statement and then guide them out of the airport.
Then an expert on the industry came on and issued reasons
1. Lots of previous redundancies
2. Very hard to recruit as people giving reasons that it’s not reliable work / lockdowns travel restrictions etc.
3. It’s not as glamorous anymore
4. Pay.
5. Trying to recoup profits from lost travel years.
However warning this isn’t going away here or other countries.
Given we’ve solved the lorry driver shortage surely this then is easy to solve?
Blackpuddin said:
From the extra revenue from the flights they can actually run instead of postpone? Give the training staff more money too while you're at it. Organisation that isn't trimmed to beyond the bone + motivated and properly rewarded staff = everybody happy. Or they could just carry on like they are and scare everyone away from overseas travel. That doesn't sound like much of a future. What's your solution?
I quite agree.I suspect whats happening though is the management is milking every excuse they can to keep the wages bill down and seeing just how far they can push the traveling public's patience before it impacts on the bottom line whilst also seeing if it's possible to create a new normal for them whilst in the airport.
In the shorter term no doubt post Covid there's a desperation among many who'll tolerate absolutely anything to get away and airports rammed with people for hours on end rather than swiftly transiting through will of course generate more revenue from food and drink sales.
Nothing to loose just yet by doing nothing about staff shortages then.
Blackpuddin said:
Tyre Smoke said:
Blackpuddin said:
If they paid enough wages they wouldn't be having such trouble recruiting staff. They won't do that so travellers pay in money, time and stress. Not sure why they can't entice more new staff by offering a hiring bonus eg double salary for first three or six months.
Jesus wept. And where do you think the funding for this 'double pay' will come from?
Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
All the information I’ve seen suggests this will continue over half term but likely be improved massively by the school summer holidays as by then delays in getting IDs and passes etc will be resolved.
Between half term and then obviously it will also improve as demand will reduce.
In the meantime, there’s simply not enough people wanting to work at airports and so there’s shortages in every area. Salaries can’t improve much to get people as margins are so slim, same with many businesses short of people at the moment. Made worse in an airport as most employees need an ID to work there with all sorts of checks especially airside so that all takes a while also.
The queues and congestion etc in the airport are all being made far worse by people understandably turning up so early and all the knock on delays due to lack of baggage loaders, security employees, etc etc are meaning airlines are then running out of crews to operate the flights as they’re constantly going out of hours due to the knock on delays and airport disruption above and then this leads to inevitable cancellations either due to crew hours or to avoid even worse downstream delays and disruption.
Between half term and then obviously it will also improve as demand will reduce.
In the meantime, there’s simply not enough people wanting to work at airports and so there’s shortages in every area. Salaries can’t improve much to get people as margins are so slim, same with many businesses short of people at the moment. Made worse in an airport as most employees need an ID to work there with all sorts of checks especially airside so that all takes a while also.
The queues and congestion etc in the airport are all being made far worse by people understandably turning up so early and all the knock on delays due to lack of baggage loaders, security employees, etc etc are meaning airlines are then running out of crews to operate the flights as they’re constantly going out of hours due to the knock on delays and airport disruption above and then this leads to inevitable cancellations either due to crew hours or to avoid even worse downstream delays and disruption.
Tyre Smoke said:
What extra flights? There are no extra flights. They are postponing the slots they have. There are no more.
Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
The core issue isn’t a lack of pilots and aircrew in the airlines it’s lack of employees at the airports. Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
Obviously then an airline might have 3x the employees they need to weather any delays but then there’s still the issue of aircraft being in the wrong places due to delays causing knock on delays so you’d still get cancellations.
The airlines could have loads (more) aircraft and crews sitting around just in case but that’s not economically viable.
El stovey said:
In the meantime, there’s simply not enough people wanting to work at airports and so there’s shortages in every area. Salaries can’t improve much to get people as margins are so slim, same with many businesses short of people at the moment. Made worse in an airport as most employees need an ID to work there with all sorts of checks especially airside so that all takes a while also.
There’s also a collective bargaining issue on salaries.Even if the airlines had the money (which arguably they do for this purpose), they can’t up the salary to attract new recruits - because there are union collective bargaining agreements in place.
Up the salary offer for new recruits = increase everyone’s salary. (Which they can’t afford to do).
Welshbeef said:
So interesting to see what will happen to the resorts where holidays have been cancelled.
No tourists = too many staff = wasted food.
The amount of cancellations are tiny on the grand scheme of things and those passengers will be spread around different hotels or doing their own accommodation. If the rooms are booked through the travel companies then they’re often owned by that company or already paid for. No tourists = too many staff = wasted food.
Some newly vacant rooms will possibly even get filled at the last minute with late bookings.
I doubt it will make much difference to hotels at all.
Tyre Smoke said:
Blackpuddin said:
Tyre Smoke said:
Blackpuddin said:
If they paid enough wages they wouldn't be having such trouble recruiting staff. They won't do that so travellers pay in money, time and stress. Not sure why they can't entice more new staff by offering a hiring bonus eg double salary for first three or six months.
Jesus wept. And where do you think the funding for this 'double pay' will come from?
Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
Tyre Smoke said:
What extra flights? There are no extra flights. They are postponing the slots they have. There are no more.
Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
You were asked "what's your solution?"Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
What is your solution? Not another rant, please.
brickwall said:
El stovey said:
In the meantime, there’s simply not enough people wanting to work at airports and so there’s shortages in every area. Salaries can’t improve much to get people as margins are so slim, same with many businesses short of people at the moment. Made worse in an airport as most employees need an ID to work there with all sorts of checks especially airside so that all takes a while also.
There’s also a collective bargaining issue on salaries.Even if the airlines had the money (which arguably they do for this purpose), they can’t up the salary to attract new recruits - because there are union collective bargaining agreements in place.
Up the salary offer for new recruits = increase everyone’s salary. (Which they can’t afford to do).
Perhaps some airlines are short staffed at the moment but not many.
Most airlines nowadays aren’t employing their own people at airports, those are usually employed by handling agents or ground handling companies or by the airport themselves. That’s where the main shortages are.
You think how many airports an airline operates into. They’re never going to have their own employees at all of those airports, even in the U.K.
El stovey said:
But the central issue isn’t lack of employees in airlines (ie aircrew) it’s lack of employees at airports.
Perhaps some airlines are short staffed at the moment but not many.
Most airlines nowadays aren’t employing their own people at airports, those are usually employed by handling agents or ground handling companies or by the airport themselves. That’s where the main shortages are.
You think how many airports an airline operates into. They’re never going to have their own employees at all of those airports, even in the U.K.
Given airlines pay to use airports I wonder what recourse they will have for this chaos ? Heathrow finally seeing bigger numbers but if all that goes in comp to airlines then how will they survive?Perhaps some airlines are short staffed at the moment but not many.
Most airlines nowadays aren’t employing their own people at airports, those are usually employed by handling agents or ground handling companies or by the airport themselves. That’s where the main shortages are.
You think how many airports an airline operates into. They’re never going to have their own employees at all of those airports, even in the U.K.
The Mad Monk said:
You were asked "what's your solution?"
What is your solution? Not another rant, please.
There’s no viable solution (this half term anyway) until the new airport employees get IDs etc the queues and congestion would be reduced if peopel didn’t turn up so early but that’s not going to address staff shortages happening right now. What is your solution? Not another rant, please.
It will get better by the summer though.
The Mad Monk said:
Tyre Smoke said:
What extra flights? There are no extra flights. They are postponing the slots they have. There are no more.
Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
You were asked "what's your solution?"Your over simplification is frankly, worrying. Double the wage bill and everything will be OK? Because by magic the profit will suddenly appear? Don't you think that they would already be doing that if it were that simple?
Where does the money come from before these magic extra flights start happening? Where do the pilots and aircrew come from?
What is your solution? Not another rant, please.
I apologise about the extra flights. That was my mistake. However, there is no extra revenue from the existing flights. They are already in the budget. There is only lost revenue.
Further, you can't just 'pay more wages' because that fuels inflation, already at 10%. Which causes spiraling on costs which calls for higher wages, which...
Before you know it inflation is at 25% the £ Sterling is dropping like a stone against other currencies, and we are back in the early 70s again. Somewhere nobody wants to be.
Edited by Tyre Smoke on Tuesday 31st May 08:42
Welshbeef said:
Given airlines pay to use airports I wonder what recourse they will have for this chaos ? Heathrow finally seeing bigger numbers but if all that goes in comp to airlines then how will they survive?
The Issues aren’t as bad as they’re being portrayed in the media and usually worse at certain times of day and at certain airports. Check the Manchester thread, even there where issues are worst people are getting through there quite quickly depending on when they’re there. I’ve operated many fights recently and some were delayed and some weren’t, I’ve even left early on a couple. That’s not going to stoke up worry or get clicks online though.
Airlines and airports will all survive this temporary disruption.
El stovey said:
brickwall said:
El stovey said:
In the meantime, there’s simply not enough people wanting to work at airports and so there’s shortages in every area. Salaries can’t improve much to get people as margins are so slim, same with many businesses short of people at the moment. Made worse in an airport as most employees need an ID to work there with all sorts of checks especially airside so that all takes a while also.
There’s also a collective bargaining issue on salaries.Even if the airlines had the money (which arguably they do for this purpose), they can’t up the salary to attract new recruits - because there are union collective bargaining agreements in place.
Up the salary offer for new recruits = increase everyone’s salary. (Which they can’t afford to do).
Perhaps some airlines are short staffed at the moment but not many.
Most airlines nowadays aren’t employing their own people at airports, those are usually employed by handling agents or ground handling companies or by the airport themselves. That’s where the main shortages are.
You think how many airports an airline operates into. They’re never going to have their own employees at all of those airports, even in the U.K.
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