By Mohamed Attia
The civil aviation sector in the European continent is currently facing a major crisis, as the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat confirmed that Europe is experiencing the largest shortage of air transport workers in 14 years due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The European Union’s statistics office added that about 325,000 workers were employed in the air transport sector in 27 European countries during the current year, which is the lowest number of workers in the field since 2008, while at least 410,000 workers were working in the field of air transport in Europe in 2019.
The European Union’s Statistics Office also said that the repercussions of the pandemic led to the layoffs of many workers by airlines, especially those aged between 15 and 39 years, as their number decreased from 184,000 in 2019 to 121,000 this year.
European airlines were criticized for their unwillingness to return travel rates to normal this summer due to the failure to hire workers instead of those who were laid off during the pandemic period, which had the greatest damage to the air transport sector and caused chaos in many European airports and even canceled and postponed thousands of trips.
According to a statistic issued by the European Airports Association, 66 per cent of European airports experience confusion in their flights between delays and cancellations, as well as the delay of passengers’ bags through a number of major European airports in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and others while thousands of flights in both America and Canada were subject to delays and cancellations.
Perhaps the scene of flight delays and the reduction of their numbers has become a repetitive image witnessed by international airports.
British airports are witnessing the cancellation and delay of thousands of flights during the past weeks.
British Airways was also forced to cancel thousands of flights during the current summer season.
Germany’s airports are also experiencing flight disruption as Lufthansa announced that it will cancel nearly 1,000 flights this July due to the lack of trained staff.
This will mainly affect the two main airports in Germany, Frankfurt and Munich, especially on weekends, the company announced.
The German company announced that it will hire about 2,000 trained workers from Turkey to work in German airports to fill the shortage of workers in them. The state of confusion at German airports has led to the cancellation of thousands of flights in the past few weeks for Lufthansa.
At the French Charles de Gaulle airport, the travel crisis worsened, as many flights were canceled with the last-minute cancellations continuing, as the lack of staff led to the adjustment of operating schedules with some labor strikes.
The French Civil Aviation Authority asked to reduce flights by 17 per cent from Charles de Gaulle Airport due to the firefighters’ strike. KLM canceled about 62 flights, while maintaining the operation of long flights and 90 per cent of short and medium flights
In Belgium, Brussels Airport is facing severe travel disruptions, and the airport has already seen at least 315 flights cancelled, confusing the travel plans of more than 40,000 passengers.
Lisbon and Porto airports also witnessed unrest after hundreds of flights were canceled due to a strike by aid workers.
Low-cost airline EasyJet was the most affected after it decided to cancel several flights in the most important Portuguese airports as a result of this protest movement in the Portway company, which is affiliated with the airports administration. The strikers demanded an immediate wage hike to improve their financial conditions.
While in the United States of America, American airlines canceled more than 1,100 flights, and delayed about 22,000 flights during the past weeks due to the lack of crews working for airlines. In Canada, 54 per cent of flights were affected at 6 major Canadian airports.
On the contrary, despite the state of confusion in airports, Egyptian airports are witnessing relative stability compared to international airports.
Discussion about this post