Easter holiday travel: No repeat of airport chaos, industry says

Airports and airlines have told the BBC they are confident they have enough staff to avoid a repeat of last year's disruption in the Easter holidays.

Some struggled with staff shortages last year as passengers returned, leading to delays and cancellations.

Wages have risen, as businesses try to attract and keep new recruits.

Airline bosses have warned strikes in France are likely to cause issues, but still expect passenger numbers to return to pre-Covid levels of 2019.

EasyJet's chief operating officer, David Morgan, said: "When they close an airport because of strikes you are going to see disruption. But the vast majority of flights, even during a disrupted period, will run smoothly".

EasyJet started recruitment six months early, while Manchester Airport said it already had enough security staff for the summer peak.

Passenger numbers swiftly returned after Covid restrictions were lifted in March 2022. But many holidaymakers encountered huge disruption, as some aviation businesses could not scale up or reverse pandemic job cuts quickly enough to cope.

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For people to get away on flights smoothly, various businesses need to work together with the right resources in place.

Last spring, Manchester Airport faced particular criticism for long queues caused by shortages of security staff. By the summer, its managing director Chris Woodroofe could only promise a "reasonable" experience.

This time he promises a "great" experience, adding: "I can absolutely reassure passengers they won't see the [security] queues they saw in summer 2022. We're aiming to deliver at least 95% of our passengers in fifteen minutes".

He said the airport had 350 more security officers than the same time last year, and there would be enough staff in place this April to cope with the busiest day in August.

A new 100 person-strong 'resilience team' has been set up, trained to help in any area where pressure builds up.

Last year, shortages of ground handlers also proved a particular challenge. These teams do tasks like unloading baggage and helping to prepare the plane for departure.

It is the responsibility of airlines, many of whom contract out the services to specialist providers. Swissport is the world's biggest, operating at 292 airports including Manchester.

Karen Cox, Swissport UK & Ireland managing director, said returning to peak levels of operations in 2022 had been a "massive challenge".

To prepare better this time, she said Swissport had kept on 5,000 workers over the winter and recruited 1,500 more.

Ms Cox described an "absolute war for labour", caused by Covid and Brexit reducing the pool of available workers. But she said: "I sit here now at end of March ready for summer."

As well as recruiting early, she said Swissport had done a number of things to recruit and retain workers.

"We did the single biggest pay deal in our history, and we've given all of our people advance roster notification so they can actually plan their lives," she said.

Backlogs in security clearance for new workers were also an issue last year, but Swissport says this is not a problem now.

Airlines too are optimistic. EasyJet was just one carrier to make large numbers of cancellations last year. The carrier and British Airways offered bonuses as airlines battled to recruit and retain staff.

EasyJet's David Morgan said the airline started hiring for this summer as early as July last year.

"We would not normally start recruiting until January, something like that," he said. "So we wanted to get ahead of the game to make sure that if there were challenges getting people through, we had plenty of time to do that."

He added: "I can say confidently that we are fully staffed for this summer. We have a good resilient number of crew in the system even to cope with the bumps if stuff that's thrown at us."

Mr Morgan acknowledged wages have gone up across the industry, and these costs and higher fuel prices are being reflected in fares.

But he insisted this was not hitting bookings. "We are seeing people prioritise travel. Easter is booking really well and we're seeing good signs for the summer as well."

The communication director of travel firm TUI, Aage Duenhaupt, said: "You can never come to the point where you can give a guarantee for everything. But what we can prepare, that's what we're doing."

Mr Duenhaupt said ground handling partners had given assurances they now had the right resources in place, and the airline had made extra planes available.

Elsewhere, security staff at London Heathrow's Terminal 5 are due to begin a 10-day strike on 31 March, which has already caused British Airways to remove flights from its schedules and could mean queues for security.

In a cost of living crisis, are people still keen to travel? Richard Slater of Henbury Travel in Macclesfield thinks so.

He said many customers - who include those looking for package holidays and cruises - are booking late. But his agency had "seen incredible demand, back to 2019 in fact probably higher".

"We're certainly seeing some people having to cut their cloth a little bit and potentially shorten their holiday, whereas others have been saving up through the pandemic," he added.