Long Read: Air Travel Chaos

Here’s our new article on the chaos in air travel all across the world. It’s a pretty long read, to make sure you’ve got some time to read this one. Want to read on the website instead? Here’s the link: theweeklynews0.wixsite.com/yourweeklynews/air-travel-chaos

Air travel is a mess right now. Flights all across Europe, North America, South America, and Asia have been canceled with short notice. But why? Let's dive in.

After the COVID lockdown, many people resigned from their jobs at near-record levels in search of better and more favorable conditions elsewhere. This was dubbed many names, including The Big Quit and The Great Reshuffle, but the most known name is The Great Resignation.

This caused a shortage of workers in practically every industry (including cargo workers, and you can read an article about the Trouble in the Los Angeles Port here). Air travel has been seriously impacted as well. Many workers resigned because of burnout, and being an airline pilot is proven by data to be the third most stressful job in the US (after being a firefighter and enlisted military as the most stressful). This caused a massive shortage in airline pilots throughout the world. But where has this affected? A lot of places.

Europe: Lufthansa have already canceled hundreds of flights and are planning to cancel more, and British Airways recently canceled over 10,000 flights. Many airports that are the hub for many airlines are ending up with chaos-stricken passengers stuck at their vacation spots, having to cancel their trips, or even worse, stuck at an airport after their connecting flight was canceled. The major European train industry leaders even met in Lyon, France, and discussed their ambitions to build a high-speed, ultra-modern railway system that would connect every major city in the EU, removing the need for airplanes in the first place. But Europe is stuck with planes for now. So what are some of the airports to avoid while planning your travels? 

1. Heathrow Airport- This airport in London, England is the busiest airport in the UK, but flight customers are very unhappy. British Airways has already preemptively canceled 30,000 flights through October and the airlines and airport is facing severe staffing shortages. One woman sifted through a sea of bags for three hours in hopes of finding her lost luggage, but she had arrived at the airport a week earlier.

2. Gatwick Airport- Gatwick is the second-largest airport in the UK and is located in Crawley, just outside London. The airport is reducing its capacity this summer and limiting how many take-offs and landings there can be each day. Low-cost airline easyJet is being blamed for much of the mess. They are Gatwick's primary airline and have canceled over 10,000 flights last minute through September. In fact, even the company is in chaos after CEO Peter Bellew resigned after the crazy start to the summer travel season. 

3. Manchester Airport- This airport in Manchester, England is yet another English airport that has been messing up travelers' summer plans since March. The airport is now at the limit, with staffing shortages and flurries of cancellations backing up check-in queues to the parking lot of the airport.

4. Schiphol Airport- Schiphol is the third-largest airport in Europe and is located just outside Amsterdam. Unfortunately, staffing shortages have turned a good, efficient airport into a nightmare for travelers. Last month, some travelers were stuck in the security line for five to six hours. It also announced that it was limiting the number of passengers flying through it to only 67,500 a day in July, but they will increase it to 72,500 in August. This is partly because of those said issues, but also partly to reduce the amount of noise pollution in the city. 

5. Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport- This major airport in Paris, France is yet another airport stricken by staffing problems and flight cancellations, but the airport is also dealing with union strikes, as workers demand a pay hike and are staging walkouts, which isn't likely to be sorted out soon. Also, a recent technical problem led to 15 flights leaving without luggage and caused another bag pile up at the airport.

6. Frankfurt Airport- This airport outside Frankfurt, Germany is facing similar problems, but here it is all about Lufthansa. The German airline is trimming over 3,000 flights from their upcoming summer schedule, affecting Germany's major cities, like Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Hanover. The understaffed German airports can't keep up with the demand of travelers, with over 7,200 vacancies waiting to be filled in German airports all across the country. If you have plans to go to Germany, you may want to skip on flying to this airport, or flying with Lufthansa.

Asia: British Airways again, makes the Asian headlines in air travel, but not in a good way. Their cancellations have also spread to Asia, but amid these cancellations, they have hired a new operations chief. Rene de Groot, who is currently the leader of operations at the Dutch airline KLM, will move to British Airways and become their new chief operating officer (COO) on October 11. On another topic, China has relaxed COVID-19 controls and re-allowed international flights, removing their old restrictions of all airlines being only allowed one weekly flight per country via a single route. Lastly, AirAsia has now turned to the country of India, with a population of 1.2 billion, to fill the gap in passengers in their flights now that Chinese tourists are not allowed on most of their flights, and are hoping that many Indians will want to travel with them and will surely be lowering their costs to attract people to them. 

Australia: Qantas Airways was one of the only airlines in the world to perfectly navigate the pandemic crisis and emerged financially sound. Unfortunately, now it's losing the recovery. The airline laid off over 8,000 employees during the pandemic, giving them the perfect amount of employees to beat the pandemic. Now, as it comes to an end, the airline is massively short-staffed, leading to very angry Australians. The backlash is a result of canceled flights, lost belongings, and unscheduled sleepovers in Australian airports. Qantas had Australia's worst flight-cancellation record ever in May, 7.6% of their flights being canceled. That's one in every 13 flights.

North America: The US's major carriers are suffering after JetBlue, American Airlines, and Delta canceled nearly 10% of their flights last weekend, a weekend when many citizens were pumped for their July 4th travels. After laying off over 30% of their employees during the pandemic, Delta, American Airlines and other carriers recovered from the early blow of the pandemic. But they thought that this was going to be at least six years before everything went back to normal. So when things started rebounding faster than expected, they were caught off-guard, causing staffing shortages as airlines struggled to get up to speed.

Well, there you have it. The hardest hit airlines and airports all across the world. Don't see anything about your favorite airline or airport? That's good, because it means that air travel is less chaotic there. If you are traveling to one of those places, The Weekly News wishes you good luck, safe travels, and one reminder: don't forget to keep checking back with us while you're relaxing on vacation, because we do our best to give you the news you need. 

By Armaan Dhawan