Pressure is increasing in European skies, at the gates of the first summer of relative normality after the pandemic.

To the chaos of these last weeks in two of the main European airports (in Heathrow, in London; and in Amsterdam-Schiphol) is now added the conflict in another of the busiest aerodromes, Paris Charles de Gaulle, where they have been canceled one out of every four flights scheduled for today due to a staff strike, which calls for better working conditions and an increase in salaries.

The airline sector is experiencing a kind of “great resignation”, which is what the phenomenon has been called in the US, where thousands of workers have left their jobs after the pandemic, considering that it is more worthwhile to live on savings or aid than to work with those such low salaries.

This labor pressure has been transferred to European aerodromes, although in a different way: In the United Kingdom they face a problem of lack of personnel, because after Brexit it is not so easy for them to hire workers to face the reactivation of traffic.

In Amsterdam they also face difficulties in recruiting troops to the point that KLM, the reference airline in the country, has had to stop selling tickets, since it could not guarantee that the flights would leave.

In the United Kingdom there are airlines that have canceled dozens of operations for the same reason.

In Spain, the chaos has its origin in the bottleneck that exists in passport controls, since the British, who are not now European citizens, have to pass this filter, which is not mandatory before Brexit (and therefore, before the pandemic).

The airlines have been demanding a reinforcement from the Ministry of the Interior for months, which yesterday announced that it would increase the staff.

work problem

In all cases, there is an underlying labor problem, a lack of personnel, in one of the sectors most damaged by the pandemic, the air sector: in the hardest months of the pandemic, practically 90% of the fleet was stopped and most of its workers were in an ERTE situation.

At the gates of summer, the fact that three of the main air connection points in Europe report a lack of staff and suffer cancellations and delays threatens to collapse the flows.

In the case of Paris, it is a strike of staff at the aforementioned airport, which demands a salary increase.

The French General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has asked the companies to reduce the number of flights this Thursday morning due to the problems of the rest of the main aerodromes due to "the problems in managing passengers due to lack of personnel."

In Spain, the Popular Parliamentary Group has requested the appearance of the members of the Government involved, the Ministers of Transport and Tourism, and that of the person in charge of the Interior, so that they give explanations about the traffic jams in the aforementioned controls.

The airline sector has been denouncing for some time that the lack of agents at passport controls could cause a collapse at the main airports.

ALA, the Association of Airlines, sent a letter to the Interior months ago asking for reinforcements. Both ALA and Iberia have reported that some 20,000 flights have been lost in Barajas alone since the beginning of the year, and the problem extends to other tourist airports.

salaries

In the case of the French aerodrome, the main unions denounce that some 15,000 jobs have been lost in two years in the air sector and demand an improvement for the templates that are now facing this peak of activity.

The collapsed situation at European airfields is reminiscent of the bottleneck in the supply chain that was experienced a few months ago, when the rapid and unexpected recovery of activity caused collapses and problems in trade and logistics around the world.

The airports of London, Amsterdam, Paris and Madrid are the main connection centers in Europe, given that the majority of long-haul flights make a stopover at one of these points, which could put at risk the recovery of tourism in which it is expected to be a record summer.

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  • United Kingdom

  • Europe

  • Paris

  • Baraja's airport

  • Iberia

  • Transportation and Tourism

  • Ministry of Interior

  • USA

  • London

  • Brexit