Marivi Wright’s “holiday from hell” began when Air France’s computer systems failed and staff had to manually check in passengers on the flight from New York to Europe.
She missed two connecting flights while flying from Paris to Spain to visit her mother, 83, landing in Malaga 12 hours late. Her luggage was gone.
“My mom has dementia, and this was my time to sit with her and look at pictures,” Wright said, explaining that they were in the lost suitcase. “I spent time shopping for clothes at the airport or filing claims. This is time with my mom that I’ll never get back. I’m emotionally drained,” she added.
Wright is one of the millions of passengers who experienced a chaotic summer vacation as flight cancellations and disruptions swept across Europe.
The problems stem from chronic staff shortages in many parts of the aviation industry, including airlines, airports and ground handling companies, which are subcontracted to provide services including check-in and baggage forwarding.
As coronavirus travel restrictions were lifted and many planned their first trips in two years, demand recovered faster than the industry was able to hire new employees.
Outbreaks of industry action added to problems, such as a pilot strike at Scandinavian airline SAS that contributed to its filing for bankruptcy this month.
“There are problems at every airport in Europe,” said Akbar Al Baker, chief executive of Qatar Airways. “We face the same problems in France, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Germany. It’s actually an epidemic.”
Passengers also suffered unquantified delays, queues and lost luggage as the industry was unable to cope with the sheer number of passengers.
Nikolas Syrimis spent 12 hours inside Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport this week, including two and a half hours in “insanely long” lines after his easyJet flight was canceled because of runway damage caused by extreme temperatures at Luton Airport. , In London.
“Despite all the news, seeing the thing in person is nothing like what I’ve ever experienced,” he said.
US airlines and airports have also experienced bouts of disruption as the movement has grown in the past year, but Europe has emerged as the epicenter of travel disruption this summer.
Even when operations do not fail, waits of hours to travel through European airports have become commonplace.
On Friday, lines snaked outside Manchester Airport and past the parking lot, where passengers waiting to depart described “organized chaos” as well as their surprise at being forced to stand next to out in the rain.
Major hub airports, including London’s Heathrow and Frankfurt, have forced airlines to shorten their hours to limit overcrowding, and Dutch airline KLM on Thursday told passengers transferring via Schiphol not to attempt to check in. baggage after a systems failure.
The vast majority of passengers will eventually arrive at their destination. But busy airports with complex operations and little leeway to reschedule delayed flights suffered some of the most significant disruptions.
Brussels airport has been the worst in Europe, with 73% of flights delayed this month, according to data compiled by online booking company Hopper.
Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle in Paris and Frankfurt were in the top ten, with more than half of flights delayed.
One in 50 flights departing European countries has been canceled in the last week, including 680 flights departing Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain – three times the number in the same period in 2019, according to the provider. Cirium data.
Smaller European airports have been more resilient, in part because of the relative simplicity of their operations. Gran Canaria, Alicante and Malaga, Spain, were among the ten best performing airports, with less than a fifth of flights experiencing delays.
Retired Pauline Kennedy compared her “amazing” experience arriving at Manchester airport to her departure from Amsterdam, where she said there were lines for everything. “I think Manchester has finally managed to organize itself,” she said.
Airports in tourism-dependent economies, where maintaining the flow of travel is a national priority, also performed better.
At Athens International Airport, Elisabet Chousiades said she walked through the terminal and picked up her bags without delay upon arriving from the United States.
Tourism is vital to the Greek economy, generating a quarter of GDP when indirect contributions are included. Surprisingly, Athens airport management resorted to a government support scheme to keep all 800 employees employed during the pandemic, as well as most of the 8,000 subcontracted employees working in ground handling and security.
“We didn’t fire anybody, we closed the operation and put people to work 50%,” said Yiannis Paraschis, its chief executive.
With the start of the peak summer travel period, when schools close and families depart on their annual vacation, the aviation industry is braced for further pressure to rise. Europe’s biggest airline Ryanair said it plans to carry more passengers this year than it did in 2019.
There are also signs that operations are recovering and disruption is waning as carriers and airports scale up their operations and put more employees on the front lines.
Cancellation rates in the UK dropped from 3% in the first week of June to 1.2% in the same period this month, while in France they dropped from 2.5% to 1.4%, according to data firm OAG.
But that’s little consolation for passengers who have suffered long delays and frustrating cancellations as they watched items of luggage disappear.
Marilou Le Lann said her bags disappeared on a layover in Paris during a trip from Turkey to Montreal (Canada) last weekend.
“I have about $30,000 worth of items in my luggage — designer bags, shoes, things like that,” she said.
She continued, “The reason we went to Turkey is that my partner had hair transplant surgery, and he had the transplant medicine in his luggage. This is now being undermined because we don’t have all the products he needs.” .
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
