With the Easter holidays approaching, the UK airline industry is in chaos and while airports and airlines duck for cover, more than 1,000 flights were canceled to and from the UK last week.
According to aviation analytics firm, Cirium, 1,143 flights were canceled in the week of March 28 to April 3.
British Airways upsets travelers by canceling 662 UK flights
British Airways, including its subsidiary BA CityFlyer, canceled 662 flights while easyJet canceled 357 flights, to and from the UK. Disrupting holiday passengers even more, just over 50% of the total flights canceled were from the weekend of April 2-3.
While COVID's upheaval has rendered many aviation comparisons meaningless, in the same period in 2019 canceled flights totaled 197.
British Airways and easyJet each canceled around 60 flights in and out of the UK yesterday, with easyJet saying it had already canceled another 62 scheduled for today.
The pictures from Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham airports are truly distressing and there seems little chance the conga-line-like queues will disappear any time soon. The popular excuse offered is a combination of COVID-induced staff shortages and unexpected peak demand, although official comment is, so far, thin on the ground.
Cold comfort for the 4% left behind
These comments on Monday were attributed to an easyJet spokesperson: "We have taken action to mitigate this through the rostering of additional standby crew this weekend, however with the current levels of sickness, we have also decided to make some cancelations in advance. Unfortunately, it has been necessary to make some additional cancelations for today and tomorrow."
It must be cold comfort to those people left on the ground with nowhere to go when easyJet goes on to say that the cancelations "represent a small proportion [of] tomorrow's total flying program which was planned to be more than 1645 flights." This is one time when being in the chosen 4% doubly disappoints.
However, it's an open question to ask if there has been enough coordination between the airlines, airports, security operators and ground handling to prepare for this weekend? After all, bookings are made in advance and schedules are known.
As the voice of UK Airports, the Airport Operators Association (AOA) released a statement on April 1 (there's that date again) saying that with all pandemic measures removed, UK airports are ready to welcome passengers back for the busy Easter period. CEO Karen Dee added, "Airports have been preparing for this for some time, but at peak times passengers may not have the experience they are used to. Airports are working hard to recruit more staff in a very competitive labor market and are working with the UK government to resolve any delays in the necessary checks before staff can start work."
Based on the events of last weekend, all those passengers left standing around for hours must be grateful that all that preparation was done.
There's no doubting that COVID, staff shortages and the Easter surge in travel are a difficult mix for all parts of the industry to handle. Aviation has had to endure many false starts and very large numbers of experienced staff were let go or left over the last two years.
Surely it's also clear that as soon as restrictions were lifted there was a lot of pent-up demand that would erupt so it seems a lot more should have been done.
The question now is how long will it take for the UK's main airports to get on top of their game?
Cre: Simple Flying
Nguyen Mai Huong-COMM
