The Mad, Mad Summer of 2022
June 27, 2022
IF YOU’VE been to the airport lately, you’ve experienced the mayhem. Terminals are swamped, planes are overbooked, cancellations are rampant, delays are out of control.
I’ve been working quite a bit over the last few months, so I’ve been in the thick of it. “Travel is back,” I wrote in a post back in May. “I wasn’t sure we’d get here, so count me among those who are happy to see a little chaos again at the airport.” I meant what I said, but things have rapidly reached a breaking point. How bad is it, exactly? It’s tough to quantify in terms of statistics, but suffice it to say that in 30 years of commercial flying, I’ve never seen anything like this.
The gist of the problem is staffing. The media keeps talking about a pilot shortage, and certainly that’s a factor, but the crisis extends across the entire industry: at the airlines and their various contractors, at air traffic control, security, airport retail, and so on.
Yes, it mostly goes back to how things were handled at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when thousands of employees were shed, and a failure to adequately re-staff as things swung back to normal. On the surface, the airlines and their partners look pretty stupid, but perhaps it’s not that simple. Remember the environment at the height of COVOD-19 downturn. The industry had never faced anything like it, and was desperate to stay alive. There was no way of predicting when, or to what extent, flyers would return. Travel restrictions and border closings changed week to week, and absolutely nothing was certain. Almost nobody predicted a return to 2019 numbers so soon. The expectation, so much as there was one, was of a gradual, incremental return over a period of years.
Air travel logistics are challenging enough in normal times, never mind when the entire world has flipped upside-down. When it came to aligning their fleets and staffing, they did what they calculated was the smartest thing to do. Some guessed better than others. And that’s what it was to a big degree: guesswork.
And so here we are. And it’s not just the United States. Security and check-in lines at some European airports are three or more hours long. I was flying out of Dublin the other day, and the lines for U.S. immigration preclearance snaked all the way to the second floor. Amsterdam-Schiphol has enacted flight restrictions, and a luggage system meltdown at London-Heathrow left passengers without their bags for several days.
As to that pilot shortage we keep hearing about, there are, in fact, two shortages, the effects of which are overlapping. One is short-term and pandemic-related, per above. The second is more systemic and longer term.
Carriers are now taking on hundreds of new-hire pilots every month. This, combined with the lingering effects of the pandemic reshuffling, finds training departments overwhelmed, with long backlogs for classroom time, simulator slots, line certification flights, etc. Pilot training is modular, and it does not happen quickly. New-hire training can take several weeks, as can moving from one aircraft type to another, or upgrading from first officer to captain. Many pilots are sitting at home, waiting their turn. Thus, it’s less a dearth of pilots than a training system overload.
Then we have the other, more systemic shortage. As I talked about in this older article, this is a significantly bigger problem at the regional carrier level than at the majors. All of the legacy airlines are currently hiring, and although they’re having no trouble filling their slots, those pilots have to come from somewhere. This is causing a ripple effect downward through the industry. The regional sector has all but reinvented itself in a plea for new-hires, offering salary and benefits packages heretofore unheard of for entry-level airline pilots.
For decades, the salaries and working conditions at regional carriers were laughably substandard. In many cases pilots were asked to foot their own training costs, only to earn poverty level wages in return. And as the regional sector expanded, taking over more and more mainline flying, a job at a regional often meant an entire career at a regional. This led to fewer and fewer pilots getting into the business, helping create the shortage we have today. These companies now have little choice but to significantly improve pay scales and benefits, both to entice new-hire pilots and to retain the ones they already have. You could say they had it coming; there never needed to be a shortage in the first place.
Overall passenger numbers are still off about 15 percent from 2019. The problem is, the 85 percent who are back are being crammed into an infrastructure that can’t handle them.
What nobody is talking about, meanwhile, is the issue of airspace and runway saturation. It was bad enough pre-pandemic. Now, several upstart carriers are pumping even more airplanes into a system at or beyond maximum capacity. It’s especially bad in the eastern half of the U.S. Things run fairly smoothly when the weather is good, but the minute a storm develops, blocking off air routes, the delays and cancellations start to cascade.
Even on clear-weather days, the taxiway queues at airports like Newark or La Guardia can be hours long. Airlines need to better rationalize their schedules and, in many markets, consolidate departures to help reduce congestion. To this end, the short-haul widebody jet is a concept whose time has maybe returned.
When will the madness end? Will it end? I keep my fingers crossed that we’re not being set up for a sort of new normal in which chaos is taken for granted. I worry, because as we’ve seen with airport security over the past two decades, the traveling public has a remarkable and discouraging ability to adapt to almost anything, no matter how absurd or inconvenient.
Let’s hope, instead, the crisis is temporary. I suspect things will improve as demand dies down after Labor Day. In the meantime, if you bring one thing to the airport this summer, have it be this: patience.
Related Stories:
THE MELANCHOLY OF AN EMPTY AIRPORT
BIG PLANES, SHORT ROUTES. WHAT A CONCEPT.
FACT AND FALLACY OF THE PILOT SHORTAGE
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20 Responses to “The Mad, Mad Summer of 2022”
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The return to normalcy was supposed to be a good opportunity and yet we see that most have had a hard time reacting to the new post-pandemic landscape.
I read that the cat has been found, after wandering Logan airport for weeks after escaping his pet carrier.
I’ve shipped pets internationally using a professional service and never had a problem. Taking them with me is a hassle. You have to remove them from the carrier at security and carry them thru the metal detector.
Do pilots have to care about animals?
Flew 10PM redeye SEA to PHI June 27, flew home BWI to SEA July 2 6PM. No problems at all, in fact surprised by how UNcrowded all 3 airports were given all the nightmare stories. Really lucked out. The 4 hour drive from Delaware/Maryland coast to BWI was the worst part of whole trip really.
“in the meantime, if you bring one thing to the airport this summer, have it be this: patience.”
umm, okey dokey.
Thing about these pilots is that they have no entrepreneurial spirit. They function in a total institution called “airline” and are quite happy to be there. That should tell you something about their womb/tribe. They are very happy and fulfilled when they tell you where to go, when, what to do there.
Maybe if there wasn’t the issue of passengers not wanting to fly out of fear due to Covid then we’d not have had to lay off so many airline employees out of fear of going broke. Now that people want to fly again, they get upset because their original lack of interest in flying created this situation in the first place… Airlines can’t get back to normal on a dime again like traveling passengers can, far too much training that needs to be had for new folks coming in. Patience, everyone needs to have it.
Interesting and informative. I’ve tripled my order of patience!! Thank you
So, no one seems to answer the questions about pilot sick calls when I know for a fact that many are becoming ill at a much higher rate than ever before. Seems odd too that they all have been “vaccinated.”
Joe BP has no idea what he’s talking about.
The pilot’s unions are keeping the airlines safe. If it were up to the airline management the pilots would be flying well past their limit set by the FAA. Fatigue is a big problem right now and the crews are calling in fatigued because they are being told to fly beyond what is safe and legal. That exacerbates the “pilot shortage.”
The liability is upon the pilot to be rested while the airline management just wants them to keep flying.
It’s the same with the rest of the unions. Management keeps low balling the wages and increasing work hours. They can’t keep people on the property as it is any MR. BP’s solution would result in a collapse of the whole transportation system.
Another part of his myopic view is that everybody wants the cheapest air fare possible so managements still make their profits but cut labor costs to the bone.
This summer if you want to make sure you get there at the appointed time….. DRIVE.
During the height of covid-19, the airline and associated industries behaved as most of the other businesses (the auto industry is another good example); they panicked! Immediate layoffs, cancelations of chip orders, etc., etc., etc. Why? Was it really an example of sound management practices or was it to appease the Wall Street analysts (who are never wrong) in their forecasts and predictions of business performance.
The days of any business being run to satisfy customers, provide good and worthwhile employment for their staff and also return a reasonable profit are long gone. The only thing important now is the profit, and in all the rest they are only going through the motions, pretending to do their jobs.
The problem is unionization. If we did away with the pilot unions, the bag handler unions, the flight attendant unions, and all the unions in-between that are a drain on the travel industry, we would have more efficient, and more economical travel.
I have never worked in the travel industry, but I am well aware of the fiercely anti-union work environment that plagues the U.S.
Genuine question: In December 2021, several airline CEOs successfully pushed the CDC to cut from 10 days to 5 days the isolation period for workers who are infected by Covid-19.
Genuine if paranoid question: Was the real purpose of the aforesaid CEOs’ push designed to push out the current roster of unionized pilots (via infection and thereby long-term or permanent disability) and then replace them with NON-UNION scabs? If so, has ALPA been bought out by the corporations?
The push to cut infected workers’ isolation time was, and still is, contemptible.
You do not want Covid-19. And you definitely do not want repeated infections.
By the way, Aids has a long incubation period.
Count on you, Patrick, to provide The Big Picture CLARITY in The Skies–utterly lacking on the evening news.
Why aren’t we seeing you making Tom Costello-like appearances with your flight deck as backdrop? You’re a natural. “Ask the Pilot” segments on TV calmly providing much-needed Global Context.
Pitch it to your media pals. But I sincerely request you reject any offers from Foxy. You don’t want your Good Cred sullied by association with those MAGA liars. Prediction: They’re going to get “theirs!”–and soon.
BTW, BILL SELL here makes EXCELLENT points re TSA STANDARDIZATION. There’s no excuse for the confusion they sow. And their stoopid, pit bull-like barking at us innocent passengers! I’m sure foreign TSA’s have better ideas. Go after TSA hard, Patrick!
One thing not mentioned, but very important, is dramatically escalating fuel costs. Airlines will be forced to pass on these costs to passengers and shippers, thus adding further fuel (no pun intended) to our inflationary woes. At some point passengers will start staying at home more due to high flying costs. This in turn will result in fewer future flights being offered and less need for staff. Point is… higher fuel costs may actually help alleviate some airport congestion as passengers shy away and airlines have to cut back operations.
Airlines have outsourced so much of their operation that they are no longer in control. Ticket counter agents, gate agents and baggage handlers at dozens of big city airports who use to be airline employees are now outsourced to lower paying contractors. Big city airports that were 100% mainline 20 years ago are now 50-100% regional. 15 of the 35 LAX-SFO flights are RJs. Mergers shut down CVG, CLE and MEM that caused millions who use to fly nonstop to or connected through those airports now are funneled through the remaining hubs creating more congestion at those airports. JetBlue gets embroiled in the Spirit merger nonsense when they should be
straightening out their own operational mess. JetBlue throws a 150 seat plane in a market with 4,000 seats using up 10-15 pilots desperately needed elsewhere. Traffic has been on a steady climb since late 2020. It’s up just 15% from last year. Traffic is not the massive unforeseen sudden surge the airlines, airports and TSA would have us believe.
I’m flying to Fiji from Canberra in September and I’m actually getting worried my connection at Sydney airport. The problem isn’t quite as bad here but a 2 and a half hour turnaround is going to be tight
I’m closing in on million miler status with DLL. I fly domestic weekly. I’m one of those out Sunday, home Friday biz travelers. I have to say that I’m looking forward to my eight-week July-August summer sabbatical due primarily to the kinetic state that air travel seems to have become. My last flight ATL-FLL (DLL2241) on 06/24 didn’t get me home until many hours later than scheduled. I see the long lines of travelers seeking rebooks and hope the situation improves when my schedule resumes in September. If I get a last minute call during my hiatus, I may consider taking my C182, even with AVGAS at almost $7 per gallon…
Mike – the data is show at most 2022 is DOWN just 10% of 2019, not coming in at just 10% OF 2019. But TSA makes up their action plan especially in cities like Vegas or Atlanta or Boston where going through three times in one day you will have different instructions and what’s allowed and not. Is an iPad in the bag or out? Shoes in the same bin as a jacket or not? Can you put an iPad and laptop in the same bin or not? Things would speed up if TSA had a process and it was standardized but then their answer of trying to make it different to catch the next shoe bomber wouldn’t work…we would all know what to expect. In the mean time 2,000,000 travelers a day get delayed and totally confused, and continually barked at. It’s a shame one dude on one flight lighting a fuse on a pair of sneakers can distrupt people for years.
I don’t mean to gloat, but reading that “the regional sector has all but reinvented itself in a plea for new-hires, offering salary and benefits…unheard of for entry-level airline pilots” prompts just a small amount of schadenfreude with this might-have-been airline pilot. Thirty years ago, when I was sending out applications by the hundreds, the industry took advantage of the situation by offering abysmal compensation and even demanding that new hires “self-fund” their initial training. That’s when I decided to stay in the 135 & corporate end of the business. Now it appears that the regionals are getting back what they dished out. What goes around, comes around.
I’m way up in the peanut gallery and still confused. TSA checkpoint numbers are still only about 10% of 2019 and numbers have going up for more than a year.
https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput
I have a trip from Seattleish to Chicago over Labor Day weekend that will involve a lot of luggage for costumes (World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention). When I looked at the current high airfares and considering the chaos that is air travel right now – I took a work trip to Nashville last month – I’ve decided to drive.
Yeah, it will take me 3 days to get there and cost a bit more, the lack of stress and the fact my luggage is sure to arrive with me will make it worth it to me.