AIRPORT CHAOS CONTINUES ACROSS EUROPE With almost all travel restrictions ended and after long awaited holidays, the stress of travelling after lockdown is even gr eater than ever, with passengers all over Europe finding long queues, lost luggage, and cancelled flights even upon arrival at the airport. Chaos’ is the word that rightly sums up the current state of travel in Europe. And more recently this chaos is extending to border controls at the ferry port of Dover in the UK, leading to hundreds of lorries, cars and holidaymakers stranded in queues for up to 7hours plus. The main reason given for this on-going issue, which seems to see no end in sight, is the lack of staff in the airline industry, boarder control and generally across the tourism sector. From our own very recent experience at the recently re-opened Terminal 4 at London’s Heathrow, the terminal building was overflowing with passengers. There were queues to join queues, check-in queues snaked for hundreds of meters. The was a gigantic queue to get through security that must have been at least a mile long with staff having to pull out passengers to fast track them through security as their flights were waiting to board. The airlines and airports, in order to survive the pandemic had to lay off thousands of staff, who have not returned and the pay being offered now, is also not drawing interest. From ground staff, to pilots and flight attendants it’s the same story acros s Europe and many other countries too. Added to this, employees are taking strike action against working conditions and pay, adding to the disruption. The solution some airlines and airports are resorting to is to cap passenger numbers and the number of tickets airlines are a llowed to sell. All while the airlines are trying to recoup the losses from 2 years o f no flying. Even if jobs are being filled, the new employees need training and that take s time; time the industry does not have. It is estimated that Britain's workforce is currently suffering from a shortfall of around one million people, despite havin g almost 100% employment amongst the population. Its solution is a need to look for more workforce from abroad. The reset button has certainly been pressed, but without the answers as to how to reset industry.
LONDON HEATHROW LIMITES DEPARTING PASSENGERS TO AVOID OVERCROWDING London Heathrow is to limit the number of daily passengers departing from the airport to 100,000 in a bid to reduce the current chaos at the airport and to reduce queues, luggage delays and just generally make it more manageable across all airport services. In 2019 the terminal handled 110,000-125,000 daily passenger departures in July and August, but with not enough workers, it has to find a solution. Heathrow is not the only airport to implemented limits, Schiphol in Amsterdam and Frankfurt International have also put limits in place.
DELTA AIRLINES ADDS BOEING 737 MAX TO FLEET Delta Air Lines is to add the state-of-the-art Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to its fleet soon, with an elevated in-flight customer experience while improving fuel efficiency. Delta will receive delivery at the beginning of 2025. The aircraft will be 20%-30% more fuel efficient than the retiring Delta planes.
