European airports hope for ‘boring’ summer after ramp-up disruptions

After high-profile scenes of delayed passengers and mounting baggage piles dominated news in the early part of the last summer, European airports believe improved staffing levels and advanced planning give them heart for a quieter summer out of the headlines. That was the sentiment as aviation industry leaders discussed the challenges ahead at the UK Airport Operators Association’s annual conference in London at the end of January. ”Last year we faced significant operational challenges; that’s because the volume surge took us a little by surprise, beating expectations,” Olivier Jankovec, director general of airports body ACI Europe, said at the start of the event. ”If you look at traffic between January to August, you see some markets had to face really exponential growth and it was not easy to cope with that. It was not easy because we faced acute staff shortages, impacting all actors in the ecosystem. Some markets were more impacted than others, notably the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, that resulted in significant disruption and impact on passengers.” Major hub airports like Amsterdam Schipohl, Dublin and London Heathrow were among the hardest hit, with the UK and Dutch hubs implementing caps on departing passengers in an attempt to avoid further disruption. ”I think it’s clear that there is no magic wand to solve this, and this also reflects differences in the way states chose to support – or not to support – airports and ground handlers [during the pandemic],” says Jankovec. This was a point Heathrow airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye hlghlighted later in the day. “It was quite telling that in France, where they had government financial support in their sector and they have a big market, Charles de Gaulle didn’t cut as deep as we did and they were able to recover a little quicker,” he notes. Handling at airports came particularly under pressure. <br/>