Routes Crisis over capacity
With airlines fi nding themselves forced to cancel hundreds of thousands of fl ights over the summer due to a host of issues, many sought to get ahead of this challenge by implementing passenger capacity limits. These caps were intended to lead to fewer cancellations, shorter wait times and better punctuality, but have drawn criticism from airlines as they reduce the number of daily fl ights and routes available to travellers. Nicholas Kenny takes a deep dive into this ongoing debate.
F
or the air travel sector, the Covid-19 pandemic was a crisis like no other. In 2022, more than two years on from the first lockdowns coming into effect, the industry is still very much dealing with the fallout. One of the key issues facing airports and airlines is that even as demand has largely recovered, staff numbers have lagged behind, with shortages in baggage handling, air traffic control, security and more. As a result, the summer of 2022 saw considerable disruption with the industry struggling to meet the rising demand, as travellers sought to make good on the holidays they had put off over the past two years. Labour shortages and strikes had already caused disruption in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and Frankfurt in the spring, and more have followed over the course of the year.
The issue across the board has been conflict over pay – much of Europe is facing rapidly rising inflation, and strike action has extended far beyond air travel over the year. These combined issues – staff shortages and strike action – led to a huge number of flight cancellations in the summer of 2022. According to data from flight-tracking website FlightAware, US-based carriers alone cancelled 128,934 flights
between January and July 2022, up 11% from 2019 levels. More than one million US-based carrier flights experienced delays in the same time period. Europe had it even worse – experiencing more than double the cancellations of US carriers between April and June, according to data from flight-tracking company
RadarBox.com. Scrapped flights in June alone accounted for 7,870 flights departing from Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain, almost triple the number from the same period in 2019.
If the cap fits
Amid all of this disruption, a number of airports decided to take action, placing limits on the number of passengers that could pass through an airport per day. In July 2022, London Heathrow Airport announced its intention to implement a passenger capacity limit of 100,000 departing travellers each day, running from 12 July until 11 September. Before the cap had been issued, airlines had scheduled flights that would result in about 104,000 passengers passing through Heathrow each day during the summer, according to the airport.
Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
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photocritical/
Shutterstock.com
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