A large influx of passengers is expected at Frankfurt Airport around Easter. A smooth trial will not be possible for several reasons.
Frankfurt am Main – Trotz Omicron And war in Ukraine will enter air traffic a first influx of passengers is expected around Easter. To move to the summer flight schedule next Sunday, airlines have expanded their flight schedules almost to the pre-crisis level.
No one at Frankfurt Airport expects everything to go smoothly during the peak days of the Easter holidays. © dpa / Boris Roessler
But after two years of slump, no one in the industry expects things to go well on peak days. Passengers must also be prepared for longer waiting times due to the additional corona procedures.
Holiday airlines, in particular, really want to get back on track with their flights to the Mediterranean. “After two years of the pandemic, millions of people finally want to make up for their holidays or meet important business contacts in person again,” says the head of the market leader EurowingsJens Bishop.
At the height of the season, his company plans to fly to Palma de Mallorca 380 times a week. Easyjet also sees pent-up demand and wants to quadruple the number of passengers for the full year compared to 2021.
Ryanair plays a special role, which is expanding across Europe in the summer, but only flies about two-thirds of its 2019 offer to Germany.
The Irish have the basics for cost reasons Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart And Dusseldorf Locked down.
Shortage of staff at the airport and airlines
During the corona crisis, Frankfurt Airport has significantly reduced its staff. Terminal 2 has been temporarily closed. © dpa / Boris Roessler
To die Lufthansa He’s already felt the first staff bottlenecks in the interaction between high demand and pilots with Omicron disease at Christmas, but he’s basically kept the flight crew on the company. “Flying only works as a team,” says Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa.
Condor airline wants to increase its counter staff on peak days and is trying to get guests to check-in online and leave their bags at the machines. The process hasn’t gotten easier with vaccination certificates and entry records, and likewise takes longer.
Frankfurt Airport director Stefan Schulte expects peak loads to experience a jerk. In his opinion, these are more serious and irregular than before the crisis. The company also reduced its workforce by more than 4,000 people, albeit more in administrative areas.
Additionally, however, many groundhandling workers quit and looked for new work because with no shifts and weekend bonuses they depended only on their meager basic wages.
Fraport wants to hire at least 1,000 new employees, but the job market has been completely emptied
Fraport now wants to take on at least 1,000 new employees, but is faced with a largely empty job market in the prosperous Rhine-Main area.
A further obstacle is the high safety requirements for people working on the forecourt, loading luggage and delivering food. The background check with the country’s aviation safety authority can take up to six weeks.
Anyone who has lived abroad for more than six months in the last five years must present a European certificate of good conduct or a certificate of exemption from criminal prosecution from the country in question, a requirement that is difficult for many migrants to achieve.
“If politicians want to help us, they have to step up the controls,” said Ralph Beisel of the ADV airport association. Airports are currently in dialogue with various high pressure service providers to determine if they are indeed prepared for the upcoming traffic spikes. A high degree of flexibility is required of the forces, because flights are distributed much more unfavorably throughout the day than before the crisis.
Flights from east and west are to be relocated to German airspace
Disaster is also preparing for air traffic control in Germany: many flights from Poland and France have to be moved to German airspace © dpa / Frank Rumpenhorst
In recent days, the Verdi union has clearly shown how fragile the air traffic system is, even with low traffic density. With two waves of warning strikes by the relatively small professional group of the air security forces, large airports outside Bavaria have been largely brought to a standstill on a daily basis and tens of thousands of passengers have not reached their destinations as planned.
At air traffic control, one of the bottlenecks of the pre-crisis years 2018/2019, disaster has been brewing for weeks. Since Putin’s attack on Ukraine, Poland has blocked airspace near the Russian border for civilian aircraft and is also grappling with a threatened but also self-inflicted personnel shortage.
According to information from the European pilots’ unions, the control forces in Warsaw should accept up to 70% lower salaries, which most people do not want. If more controllers fail, more overflights would have to be relocated to German airspace, says Volker Möller, deputy chairman of trade union coordination ATCEUC.
The same threatens from the west, as French air traffic control DSNA is launching a new computer control system at its eastern French headquarters in Reims on April 5, well in time for the start of the German Easter holidays.
For safety reasons, the new system will initially operate with reduced capacity, whereby some holiday flights in German airspace will have to be postponed until the end of July.
Flight delays “will probably be unavoidable” in the coming months, warns Dirk Mahns, head of operations at German air traffic control.
