Big problems at some airports

Redwurzel

Redwurzel

Well-known member
Just read this story about difficulties at Manchester Airport today.

Flights cancelled, 3 hour waits to check in, lost luggage.

Surely the businesses involved knew of the likely problems 4 months ago when the pandemic peaked and countries fully opened up again i.e bookings would be back to normal. I could understand new staff were being trained in March and April, but its the end of May now and their are reports of large shortgages of staff, broken equipment.

www.bbc.co.uk

Manchester Airport branded 'complete nightmare' in fresh queue chaos

Flights are cancelled and baggage lost as passengers try to get away for half-term holidays.
www.bbc.co.uk

However planning a wedding in Spain for UK visitors was risky.

When will in be normal? September?

Just attended the Hay Literary Festival (biggest in the World I think) and it appears to be running smoothly. Crowds about 90% of the normal level. Good weather has helped, sunny and dry in general.
 
Flying in there Wednesday morning from here, hopefully inbound won’t be affected as much.
 
My missues has just had a week in Turkey with her family. They were meant to fly back Saturday with easyjet.

They arrived at the airport and flight cancelled. The hotel they were in was fully booked. So had to find hotels for 5 spread all over the place and paying up to £100 a night as short notice.

I believe they are organising an 'emergency' flight to get everyone home. That said its another night of me watching what I want...every cloud and all that 😂
 
S7DiscoDown said:
My missues has just had a week in Turkey with her family. They were meant to fly back Saturday with easyjet.

They arrived at the airport and flight cancelled. The hotel they were in was fully booked. So had to find hotels for 5 spread all over the place and paying up to £100 a night as short notice.

I believe they are organising an 'emergency' flight to get everyone home. That said its another night of me watching what I want...every cloud and all that 😂
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Emergency flight - sounds like its in a war zone :confused:
 
NZBoro1 said:
Flying in there Wednesday morning from here, hopefully inbound won’t be affected as much.
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Not convinced. Picked my lad up from there yesterday.
They sat on the tarmac for 3 hours and then took another hour to get out through arrivals.
Loads of inbound flights in the same boat..... some very long faces and a lot of cursing coming out of the arrivals hall.
Really felt for the old and those with young kids. Horrific end to a holiday.

Welcome to Brexit and 3 rd world Britain. :mad: :poop:
 
The airports laid a lot of their staff off and don't seem to be in a rush to re/recruit. Recruiting again could be a problem due to Brexit in parts of the UK where there are more jobs than people. Many of the smaller regional airports could benefit - the problems seem bigger at the bigger airports (London, Birmingham, Manchester). Customers are pushed toward the big airports in the UK in my opinion but others will know better than me as I don't fly a lot. Cancelling flights could be problems with pilots, cabin crew. I suspect training was stopped for nearly 2 years for pilots. Cabin crew pay has been cut over the years, so its become a low paid job and hence airlines will struggle to recruit. Unions warned this would happen. Again taking pilots and cabin crew from Eastern Europe EU countries helped, but was not the long term solution and drove wages down.
 
Redwurzel said:
The airports laid a lot of their staff off and don't seem to be in a rush to re/recruit. Recruiting again could be a problem due to Brexit in parts of the UK where there are more jobs than people. Many of the smaller regional airports could benefit - the problems seem bigger at the bigger airports (London, Birmingham, Manchester). Customers are pushed toward the big airports in the UK in my opinion but others will know better than me as I don't fly a lot. Cancelling flights could be problems with pilots, cabin crew. I suspect training was stopped for nearly 2 years for pilots. Cabin crew pay has been cut over the years, so its become a low paid job and hence airlines will struggle to recruit. Unions warned this would happen. Again taking pilots and cabin crew from Eastern Europe EU countries helped, but was not the long term solution and drove wages down.
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Lad next door to me works for an airport security company. He says they paid off the majority of the workforce during the Covid pandemic. They found other jobs elsewhere and aren't returning. To replace them each new employee must go through a full security check. They used to take weeks, now taking longer due to the imbeciles in government.

Had the employees been furloughed the problem wouldn't have arisen.
 
The easy way out is to cry Brexit and everyone agrees. It allows for a degree of sheer incompetence on the part of airlines. Accepting the customers’ cash should oblige them to provide at least an adequate sevice.
Personally I try very hard not to travel on holiday periods , because it is and always has been sheer hell. Not always possible, but I know the consequences if I waver from the rule.
 
Flew to Malaga from Newcastle this week, flight delayed by an hour, but otherwise no issues (Jet2).

We deliberately avoided Manchester though, it seems to be in meltdown.

I thought the issue was staff shortage, after so many were laid off during lockdown?
 
It isn't down to Brexit at all. It's companies couldnt afford to keep people whose wages depend on there being flights and airport traffic. Same issue theatres, cinemas and hospitality had...no customers, no work, no cash, no wages, no staff needed. I agree, however, that companies could be a bit quicker out the blocks to recruit, but the companies that are recruiting heavily simply cant get the staff back as they've moved into other roles which are less risky. I work for an airline and I know we have held a list of staff we let go and invited them back. A lot of companies did this too but sadly, its not as simple as saying come back.

It'll probably be like this till around Xmas then it should pick up. Remember it took 2 years effectively out of peoples lives, so it'll probs take another 2 or best part of it to get it back. It's not great I agree, but it's a difficult one for everyone.
 
clay said:
It takes them much longer to process non-EU passengers than EU passengers, and obviously they now have far more of the former and far fewer of the latter.
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When I have gone to Dublin, Brits are less than 10% of the traffic. And some of the Brits travelling to Dublin have EU passports, you are allowed more than one passport.
 
Im flying Teesside to Amsterdam tomorrow. Connection is the following day. Im going to check case in all the way. Hand luggage to see me through the night in Amsterdam, just in case.
 
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