Are the flight delays a deliberate act?

[Excel-Expert]

I happened to be on a site today that had a graph showing the cost of jet fuel (https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/) and it shows the price was around $100 a barrel at the start of the year, and in May it has been around the $170 mark. And that got my cynical brain thinking.

In an industry where the paint on the plane is a consideration to help save fuel and costs, can the airlines afford a 70% increase in fuel costs? They would have been taking bookings for months based on the lower fuel prices, but now they have to deliver on the higher costs. They couldn't just cancel all the flights (it would be a PR disaster), but what if they could engineer a situation that forced cancellations? As the government have pointed out they have had months to get staff and agency staff in.

Could they have deliberately left themselves understaffed to cause this situation so they could cancel loads of flights? Is it cheaper for them to give refunds (which they will hold on to for years first) and pay a little bit of compensation, rather than pay the extra cost of fuel? They also get to say it was beyond their control and blame it on other things.

Just a theory from a cynical brain

 

[NickGrogan]

Given that fuel is a big cost and volatile, I'd expect the airlines to hedge most/all of the fuel costs when setting the price for the tickets, so any flights sold in Jan for June would have had the fuel purchased already.

Unless they thought the price would fall and so didn't hedge everything. Or they couldn't raise enough credit to hedge fully.

 

[WaveJumper]

They hedge there fuel costs well ahead, staffing is the big issue as being openly reported in the press. Many have left the industry for good due to the low pay unsocial hours etc etc. Don't forget it takes a huge team in the airports to process and get the passengers to the actual plans door before the pilot and cabin crew take over. As anyone in business knows trying to get the right staff these days is a rather large and tall order.

 

[japancool]

You can't just get agency staff in for a plane at short notice. They have to be trained on that specific model of plane, and that includes cabin crew, not just aircrew. Granted, they knew when the busy times were likely to be and should have been ready, but the crew pay is not that great, and a lot of airline staff have moved on to other things (or gone to work for a proper airline, rather than Ryanair or Easyjet).

I dunno why anyone would want to be a gate agent for one of these budget airlines, with the low pay and aggro they get.

And I rather suspect some of this is to do with the airport also simply not having the staffing to process this many passengers through security.

 

[MOIC]

What I don't understand is why let 'passengers' go to the airport if they know the flight is cancelled? In one case, they were actually on the plane and asked to leave!

 

[MOIC]

Given that fuel is a big cost and volatile, I'd expect the airlines to hedge most/all of the fuel costs when setting the price for the tickets, so any flights sold in Jan for June would have had the fuel purchased already.

Would an act of war in February be classed as a force majuere, if there was a clause in the contract? (I presume there would be one in oil contracts)

 

[Ian J]

staffing is the big issue as being openly reported in the press. Many have left the industry for good due to the low pay unsocial hours etc

Many have also left the hospitality industry for the same reasons so where have they all gone?

 

[fisicx]

Many have also left the hospitality industry for the same reasons so where have they all gone?

Working for the supermarkets. Seems to be hundreds of them pushing those online shopping trollies around.

 

[WaveJumper]

Pilots not to much in short supply however 120k to get your licence and crap pay I wonder why my friend does it other than the love of flying. Another close friend is working cabin crew Easy Jet and another has just recently started in a security role at Stanstead the hours and pay are crap. In my opinion it's not the "glamour" industry it once was unless perhaps your working long haul. But hey we all want cheap flights?

In answer to the question, the old staff appear to have filled up the McDonalds car park and now delivering fast food

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

Many have also left the hospitality industry for the same reasons so where have they all gone?

Regular 9-5 office jobs!... During covid my wife's office needed staff and some from hospitality on furlough joined on a temporary basis.....and have stayed!

Although pay was a little less, they discovered the benefits of "normal" working hours which meant they had their weekends and evening free to spend time with their children and family.

I think covid has given a lot of hospitality workers an opportunity to take a chance on an alternative that may suit them better and many have decided they prefer it!

 

[Excel-Expert]

Taking they have hedged the cost of fuel. That would indicate they had a lot of forward planning and know they have to serve a set number of people on set days. They would have also known a couple of weeks ago they only had staff to serve a fraction of those numbers and had zero chance of recruiting and training the required level of staff.

Yet they still chose to let bedlam unfold. X amount of flights could have been cancelled weeks ago and the passengers informed. Bad planning on behalf of everyone involved? Or is there a financial benefit to cancelling things once people were in the airport (eg some insurance kicks in)?

 

[Jeff FV]

Re the original question, I don’t think so (flights are being cancelled to save on fuel costs). Two examples that inform my thinking:

Last year, July 2021, I flew with EasyJet to Corfu. At the time, Greece was on the amber list, things were only just beginning to open up. There were about 50 people on the plane, the jet was about one third full, but it still went. (As an aside, one of the best flights Ive ever been on! Plenty of space, and nearly everyone was in the age range 40 to 60, happy to be travelling again. No crying/screaming children!)

Pre-pandemic, we flew to Majorca. Flight was delayed, can’t remember for how long (lets say more than 2 hours) which passed the threshold for compensation. However, once airborne, the pilot opened the throttles to max chat and made up some time in the air, meaning we still arrived late, but now just under the threshold for compensation. The airline obviously figured the extra cost in fuel burn was less than the cost in compensation.

I think the cancellations are simply due to a lack of staff

 

[Excel-Expert]

But surely the lack of staff was no surprise? Like fuel, it is a resource that needs to be projected and managed well in advance. The airlines were selling tickets expecting airports and themselves to go from 25% staffing levels to over 100% staff levels with seasonal workers, in just a few months. You wouldn't have needed a crystal ball to see that was never going to happen. Especially as every other industry was facing the same ramping up staff issues.

An interesting clip on the news yesterday. It showed a police officer relaying the airline's cancellation message to an angry crowd at the airport. In it, he said they would get a bit of compensation, but their refunds could take up to 400 days!.

So they are potentially holding on to hundreds of millions of pounds for 1.5 years. Many will give up trying to get that money back in that time. That sounds like a big incentive on its own

 

[IanSuth]

One of the staffing issues is that a lot of the staff needed are airside.

You can't work airside until you have been security checked

Along with everything else related to the the civil service security checks are taking an age to come through, so you have companies waiting until it was clear there would be no new covid restrictions and then starting to recruit, which took longer due to competition for staff (remember a lot of the multilingual people they prefer are no longer interested in living in the UK), then when they have found them they can offer them a job "subject to security clearance" whilst they wait the stupid amount of time for that to come through those people can all keep looking for other jobs so they lose a few at that stage as well.

Pre pandemic i believe it was 4-6 weeks, currently it is running at over 3 mths from what i understand

(ps although the passes are not done by civil service parts of the process require an answer from the civil service over convictions etc and that is the choke point)

 

[BustersDogs]

Many have also left the hospitality industry for the same reasons so where have they all gone?

Judging by the shocking state of the driving, they're all in white vans delivering anything and everything, or on bicycles delivering your fast food cold.

 

[Ian J]

An interesting clip on the news yesterday. It showed a police officer relaying the airline's cancellation message to an angry crowd at the airport. In it, he said they would get a bit of compensation, but their refunds could take up to 400 days!.

So they are potentially holding on to hundreds of millions of pounds for 1.5 years. Many will give up trying to get that money back in that time. That sounds like a big incentive on its own

I think that Grant Shapps may have something to say about that

 

[japancool]

If you want to get the top pay as a pilot, you need to be flying a B777, A350 or B787 (not so many A380s or B747s flying these days, except the latter as freighters).

You're not living a glamour lifestyle if you're flying Luton-Majorca every day.

Pilot A: "I was in New York, Dubai, Delhi and Tokyo last week."
Pilot B: "I was in Luton."

 

[Newchodge]

An interesting clip on the news yesterday. It showed a police officer relaying the airline's cancellation message to an angry crowd at the airport. In it, he said they would get a bit of compensation, but their refunds could take up to 400 days!.

The airline's first obligation is to get the passenmgers to their destination using any available carrier, even if it means paying BA prices. It is only if the passenger rejects that option that they are due a refund. Within, if I remember correctly, 28 days. And in cash, not vouchers for future travel.

 

[japancool]

The airline's first obligation is to get the passenmgers to their destination using any available carrier, even if it means paying BA prices. It is only if the passenger rejects that option that they are due a refund. Within, if I remember correctly, 28 days. And in cash, not vouchers for future travel.

Many airlines just take the pee with refunds. They don't tell the passengers about the obligation to refund in cash, and if the traveller accepts the voucher, they're no longer entitled to the cash refund.

Also, you are right, they are obliged to get the passenger there, but from the airport that they're currently at. If you're flying from Leeds/Bradford, you're pretty much limited to Jet2. BA only fly to Heathrow (I think) from LBA, and KLM Cityhopper flies to Amsterdam. Which meant that the next available flight could be in 3-4 days or longer, which won't work for most people.

 

[Excel-Expert]

Correction - I have just seen another clip of the police officer telling the crowd and it may have been 14 days, not 400 days. Hard to tell with all the shouting but going by the lack of reaction by the crowd it was probably 14 days. My bad folks

 

[Bob Morgan]

1. Take the Money! 2. Cancel the Flight! 3. Issue a Credit Note! 4. Keep the Money! REPEAT!

 

[WaveJumper]

Yep its fair to say between the government and airport operators they have got it completely wrong. The airport operators let so many staff go it was bound to be the perfect storm when it came to trying to recruit etc for all the reasons others have mentioned here.

let's not forget there is a difference between the airlines and the airports (mentioned above I believe) the airport operators run the airports like taxi ranks the planes turn up off load and pick up, the rest of the work is carried out by either Menzies or Swiss Air staff who handle everything else from refuelling, loading your luggage etc. And yes getting security clearance for workers is a nightmare and added to that the training required for a lot of the positions is measured in weeks not days .......... so the perfect storm. When the public at large want cheap flights I think this is going to take a lot longer to resolve as the airports struggle to offer a decent enough package to attract the right people.

Bad enough in retail let alone being screamed at by an angry mob in the airport me thinks I wouldn't want to be doing it.

 

[fisicx]

My daughter want to visit from Germany. We keep booking and the flights keep being cancelled. 2 years this has been happening. It’s BA so I suspect the business people who used to fly back and forth aren’t anymore making the route unviable.

It’s got so bad that she now drives to the UK.

 

[WaveJumper]

My daughter want to visit from Germany. We keep booking and the flights keep being cancelled. 2 years this has been happening. It’s BA so I suspect the business people who used to fly back and forth aren’t anymore making the route unviable.

It’s got so bad that she now drives to the UK.

My neighbours here just left for France this morning (at 6.00) in their car I thought they were off to the airport they just laughed and pointed to the sticker on the boot and said they won't be trying to fly for sometime yet ...... can't blame em

 

[MikeJ]

I had a flight from Budapest cancelled by Easyjet last month, Flight was on Saturday, they cancelled on the Tuesday before. Fortunately there was an alternative from WizzAir that we could take. Compensation came in about two weeks, refund for the flight in about four weeks.

Part of the issue is how close airlines are running with staffing levels. You need a certain number of crew for each plane, if one calls in sick then the whole plane doesn't fly. That explains why you can be on the plane when it's cancelled.

Easyjet were removing seats from some of their planes to lower the capacity. That allowed them to drop one person from the cabin crew, which meant the plane could fly.

 

[Ian J]

Part of the issue is how close airlines are running with staffing levels. You need a certain number of crew for each plane, if one calls in sick then the whole plane doesn't fly. That explains why you can be on the plane when it's cancelled.

A few years ago we were flying from Luton to Sardinia with Easy Jet and the cabin manager had rung in sick. The nearest cabin manager that they could locate was in Paris so we had to wait until they had flown him from Paris to Luton before we could take off.

A friend was cabin staff for Virgin on their long haul flights and on her "stand by" days she had to be within an hour of Heathrow so used to drive from West Midlands half way to Heathrow and just hang about to see if she got called up.

Those were in better staffing days though

 

[japancool]

Good thing I only fly long-haul. Except for the connecting flights, that is.

 

[Excel-Expert]

Yep its fair to say between the government and airport operators they have got it completely wrong. The airport operators let so many staff go it was bound to be the perfect storm when it came to trying to recruit etc for all the reasons others have mentioned here.

let's not forget there is a difference between the airlines and the airports (mentioned above I believe) the airport operators run the airports like taxi ranks the planes turn up off load and pick up, the rest of the work is carried out by either Menzies or Swiss Air staff who handle everything else from refuelling, loading your luggage etc. And yes getting security clearance for workers is a nightmare and added to that the training required for a lot of the positions is measured in weeks not days .......... so the perfect storm. When the public at large want cheap flights I think this is going to take a lot longer to resolve as the airports struggle to offer a decent enough package to attract the right people.

Bad enough in retail let alone being screamed at by an angry mob in the airport me thinks I wouldn't want to be doing it.

I had forgotten about having to get staff through security clearance as well as training. For the sake of arguments sake, let's say security checking and training takes a month. That means the airlines and the airports must have known at least a month ago that they didn't have the staff for a full schedule, let alone an oversold full schedule.

So why didn't the cancellations happen back then, allowing families to make alternative plans? (This is the part of the staff shortage claim that doesn't add up to me). They (airports and airlines) must have had a good month or two's warning this was the situation, yet they decided to let it unfold in the terminals. They could have taken a much easier and PR friendly option of cancelling flights months/weeks in advance.

To allow it to happen this way is either complete stupidity or there is a hidden business benefit in allowing it to happen this way. Maybe there is some form of insurance payout or liability issue at stake.

 

[Newchodge]

I had forgotten about having to get staff through security clearance as well as training. For the sake of arguments sake, let's say security checking and training takes a month. That means the airlines and the airports must have known at least a month ago that they didn't have the staff for a full schedule, let alone an oversold full schedule.

So why didn't the cancellations happen back then, allowing families to make alternative plans? (This is the part of the staff shortage claim that doesn't add up to me). They (airports and airlines) must have had a good month or two's warning this was the situation, yet they decided to let it unfold in the terminals. They could have taken a much easier and PR friendly option of cancelling flights months/weeks in advance.

To allow it to happen this way is either complete stupidity or there is a hidden business benefit in allowing it to happen this way. Maybe there is some form of insurance payout or liability issue at stake.

I would suggest that security clearance and training would be a minimum of 3 months, in normal times. If the people who need to respond about security clearance are busy/understaffed, then even longer.

 

[WaveJumper]

I had forgotten about having to get staff through security clearance as well as training. For the sake of arguments sake, let's say security checking and training takes a month. That means the airlines and the airports must have known at least a month ago that they didn't have the staff for a full schedule, let alone an oversold full schedule.

So why didn't the cancellations happen back then, allowing families to make alternative plans? (This is the part of the staff shortage claim that doesn't add up to me). They (airports and airlines) must have had a good month or two's warning this was the situation, yet they decided to let it unfold in the terminals. They could have taken a much easier and PR friendly option of cancelling flights months/weeks in advance.

To allow it to happen this way is either complete stupidity or there is a hidden business benefit in allowing it to happen this way. Maybe there is some form of insurance payout or liability issue at stake.

Yes it all beggars belief really and I would say all parties need to shoulder a share of the blame. The airlines have had their own set of issues but the airport operators have been in my view a disgrace for a number of years now. And your right they must have seem this coming and now just trying to deflect the blame.

I gave up flying short haul a couple of years a go (was flying out to Spain 2/3 times a month booking all my flights a year in advance) I just could not stomach the hassle then of getting through Stanstead airport in particular or arriving back at midnight with six flights in and two people at passport control. In short I don't think they care at all and I feel real sorry for all those people struggling to get away now.

Long haul only for me now but saying that I have nothing booked this year and I would normally by now have something booked for January 23 but just can't bring myself to do it at the mo.

 

[UKSBD]

They've always overbooked to allow for people cancelling

There are probably nowhere near the amount of customers cancelling now than they expected there to be.

It's probably all worked out by algorithms and Covid messed up the data so much that the algorithms aren't accurate enough now.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

We have the done the maddest thing !
Booked two planes one on the Thursday and one on the Saturday if the first one does not go we then have the second one

You should be sure that you are going to get there You should not have to pull out ridiculous plans like this at the last minute !

 

[WaveJumper]

We have the done the maddest thing !
Booked two planes one on the Thursday and one on the Saturday if the first one does not go we then have the second one

You should be sure that you are going to get there You should not have to pull out ridiculous plans like this at the last minute !

Best of luck with that ....... where you flying from

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Best of luck with that ....... where you flying from

Bristol to Kephalonia Airport a route we have done before with no problems

 

[WaveJumper]

Bristol to Kephalonia Airport a route we have done before with no problems

Fingers crossed for you hope it all goes well

 

[WaveJumper]

Sometimes you just have to smile:

"The GMB union, which represents aviation workers, said if people don't check-in luggage it "limits the disruption"

There you go @JEREMY HAWKE don't take a change of clothing and all will be fine ?

Travel industry plea for overseas workers rejected

The government rejects firms' request for special visas to fill thousands of vacancies before summer.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Excel-Expert]

And now Michael O'Leary wants the Army to be drafted into the airports for 3 months, to sort the mess out. I suspect the Army may have enough on their plates at the moment without sorting out this mess.

 

[Excel-Expert]

They've always overbooked to allow for people cancelling

This is true, but I think the government is referring to a different type of overselling.

I think they are referring to the fact that the airports and airlines must have known months in advance they couldn't attempt the number of flights, but they went ahead and sold them anyway. i.e. not overselling a few seats on each plane, but overselling hundreds of flights they couldn't possibly manage to get off the ground.

 

[WaveJumper]

A little birdie told me yesterday that Stanstead had been dealing with over 45k passengers a day if true ………that’s a lot of bloody jets

 

[Mark T Jones]

My neighbours here just left for France this morning (at 6.00) in their car I thought they were off to the airport they just laughed and pointed to the sticker on the boot and said they won't be trying to fly for sometime yet ...... can't blame em

We are currently in France - braved the carnage at Dover last weekend.

In fairness, it wasn't too bad despite media reports - we missed our ferry despite arriving 2 hours early, but the process was simply to stick us on the next available one .

Last time we flew - to Vienna, was the weekend that the BA computers went down. First delay- the crew were on the wrong plane - which they cheerfully told us about. Then an hour delay whilst they turned the computer off and restarted it (my last computer was a bit like that) that was more problematic, but hardly desperate