Flight disasters

[Suff]

Reading the press on the latest disaster with TUI and Easyjet, it is not hard to come to the conclusion that staff, flushed with two years of restricted flights and buoyed with furlough cash, simply don't want to work that hard any more.

Also possible that many in the more menial tasks took advantage of the lockdowns to get themselves into other, les stressful and better paid, jobs.

I suspect this will take years to work its way out of the system and there will be multiple holidays destroyed. Our holiday this year is before the autumn half term, for which I breathe a sigh of relief. For others stuck with school holiday travel, my sympathies.

[cruiser2]

THere are so many factors in making sure a plane gets off on time.
Before this pandemic I was on a flight when the last passenger to board took several minutes to push her large hand luggage into an
overhead locker. She refused to let the cabin staff take it off her and put it into the hold.
On anothet occasion, we had just started taxi-ing out when the pilot said we would have to return to the stand as one of the doors
over the cargo hold was not closed properly.

[Suff]

THere are so many factors in making sure a plane gets off on time.
Before this pandemic I was on a flight when the last passenger to board took several minutes to push her large hand luggage into an
overhead locker. She refused to let the cabin staff take it off her and put it into the hold.
On anothet occasion, we had just started taxi-ing out when the pilot said we would have to return to the stand as one of the doors
over the cargo hold was not closed properly.

Loads of those Cruiser, the pushy pilot on KLM who took the corner to the other runway too fast and threw a warning light but I guess the prize goes to the Buzz flight where when we boarded a technician had the cowls open on one of the turbofans. We got 3/4 of the way down the runway in Paris CDG before they did an emergency abort and took us back to the terminal and just abandoned us to find our own way.

These issues, though, appear to be crew/baggage handlers/airport staff related. Simply put they don't seem to be fully ramped up to take this kind of volume either in staffing or in the ability to calculate the volume of staff and aircraft required to do the job.

It is not unusual for flights to be cancelled. One time I was sitting in Schiphol airport waiting for a flight which never arrived. Turned out that a huge hole appeared in Milan Malpensa airport and my plane was doing back to back runs on a Friday (normal). No plane to take over the route.

I've also been sitting in Luton on a Friday with "Easyjet hell" where the back office scheduling team just move planes like shuffling cards. I know why it is but it confuses the hell out of most travellers. I mean there is a plane and you get on it right?

But hundreds of flights just cancelled because the airline simply can't cope?? That's not normal for Easyjet, they inhabit the lower end of the flight business and cheap but available is their zone. Becoming unavailable may cost them more than they can afford. BA now, this is common when stuff goes wrong.

I predict more pain to come.

I'm adjusting my travel routes to avoid the obvious blackspots. Like Dover, not a chance. I came over Harwich to the Hoek. Simple and easy and a bed even during the day. Price was competitive with Dieppe Newhaven and I didn't need to go anywhere near the M25.

Back to my OP though. It seems that the high volume flight business has had too long a break and they either have forgotten just how much hard work it is; or they simply don't want to go there any more. I do sympathise to a degree, it's a hell of a way to make a living and passengers are rarely tolerant when things go wrong.

[cromwell]

My daughter's boss used to work for Manchester airport. She quit over a year since because she saw this coming.
Airports and baggage handling firms sacked loads of staff when furlough ended and are now struggling to replace them.
Plus the new staff have to be security checked by the government and that's taking forever as well.
Total mess.