Following scenes of chaos and flight cancellations that recently hit UK airports, London hub Gatwick announced on Friday that it would significantly reduce the number of daily flights in July and August.
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“During this peak holiday season, the airport will cautiously and gradually increase its capacity,” limiting it to 825 flights per day in July and 850 in August, the airport, which was operating nearly 900 flights, said in a press release during the summer months leading up to the pandemic. The airport says there are “serious staffing shortages” that will affect a number of Gatwick-based airlines or ground service providers during the summer season. “If this issue is not addressed, airport passengers will suffer from unreliable and potentially poor service, with more queues, delays and last-minute cancellations,” Gatwick warns.
A sector struggling to recruit
The airline industry has been one of the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought much traffic to a standstill due to lockdowns and travel restrictions and has seen airlines and airports lay off thousands of workers. As demand picks up, the sector is struggling to hire new staff, a problem that is expected to persist through the summer and is affecting the UK but also airports on the European continent, officials have warned. Gatwick, majority-owned by Vinci Airports, was the second busiest UK airport by number of passengers carried before the pandemic. With traffic still very reduced, it climbed to third place last year behind Stansted, another airport in the capital.
The decision to reduce the number of flights “will allow airlines to operate and manage more predictable and reliable flight schedules” as the airport experienced “a significant and rapid increase” in traffic, particularly in early June during the long weekend of December Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II The chaos at airports in recent months has brought the industry under fire from critics, particularly the government, who have accused companies of being ill-prepared for however predictable a resumption of traffic.
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The government “tried to work with (the main UK hub) Heathrow, Gatwick or the other airport operators. We want them to do more,” Secretary of Commerce Paul Scully told SkyNews on Friday. The industry accuses the authorities of not speeding up the validation procedures for new flight or airport staff.
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