[ad_1]
The recovery of the airline industry is being tested this holiday season as passengers return in numbers close to pre-pandemic numbers.
The revival in air travel has been fueled by pent-up demand and the availability of vaccines, with an apparent recession in virus cases since the summer big wave. The Transportation Security Administration says passenger checkpoints are now nearly as busy as they were in pre-pandemic 2019.
Airlines are increasing their capacity to meet this demand, but the industry is hampered by a delayed workforce recovery. They are having a hard time hiring more personnel, especially air crews. This has raised concerns that major airlines could enter a rough December.
“Like many industries, they compete for people,” said Third Bridge analyst Peter McNally. “They know what they have to do, it’s just a matter of going out and doing it.”
Major airlines encouraged thousands of workers to leave their jobs last year after air travel crashed during the pandemic. They were banned from laying off workers as a condition of federal pandemic relief. These workers did not return quickly enough, leaving the existing workforce strained. In many cases, flight crews are reaching the time limits allowed, forcing flight cancellations as there are not enough cabin crew.
American Airlines faced such a situation in late October when it had to cancel more than a thousand flights due to staff shortages. Southwest Airlines also made headlines for flight cancellations in October. Both airlines cited weather problems, though analysts said any real air or air traffic problems exacerbated the core problem of staff shortages.
“One of the problems airlines have had so far in coverage has been the unpredictable nature of booking,” McNally said. “People are booking travel with less time between booking and travel, making it harder to recruit.”
American Airlines’ labor unions have warned for months that the airline is planning more flights than its workforce can handle.
“These cases have shown how quickly weather conditions and now staffing shortages can fluctuate across airlines, just as they seek to maximize fall revenues within exorbitantly low operational margins,” airline industry data provider Cirium said in a recent report.
American, Delta and United spent the first half of 2021 slowly recovering from the worst of the pandemic. Each airline has seen modest improvements in available seat miles, an important measure of passenger capacity. This measure reached almost pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter.
The pressure to increase passenger capacity may have been too much for some airlines. Employment for air travel is still down more than 9% from peak levels just before the virus pandemic rattled the industry, according to Department of Labor data. Staffing levels will likely need to continue to increase to help maintain flight capacity for a full income recovery.
[ad_2]
Source link