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The “sudden” arrival of passengers to European airports after the deregulation of Covit-19 was a “challenge” was confirmed on Thursday by an organization that manages these airports, which reduced its staff during the crisis.

With reports of airport congestion on the rise, the ACI acknowledges that there are “significant restrictions” affecting European air traffic.

Urgently dealing with the causes of congestion

“Managing traffic congestion is an urgent challenge as the epidemic has significantly affected and reduced the capacity of airports and ground services,” Oliver Jankovic, director general of ICI Europe, said in a statement.

“Currently, it’s about re-employment in a very narrow labor market across Europe,” he added.

The IATA, a major global association of airlines, called on Wednesday to “deal urgently” with the causes of the congestion.

Avoid scattering the excitement of the passengers

IATA General Manager Willie Walsh lamented the “long wait times at many airports due to a lack of resources to manage the growing crowd” and urged action to be taken “to avoid wasting passengers’ enthusiasm”.

The KLM was forced to cancel dozens of flights to and from Amsterdam-Schiphol last weekend, with large crowds roaring during the spring break.

Trade unions representing the employees or contractors of the ADP Group, which operates Paris airports, have warned of the dangers of overcrowding, especially during security surveillance, while there are 4,000 vacancies on these sites and companies are struggling to hire.

Benjamin Smith, chief executive of Air France-KLM, said on Thursday that Europe and North America were facing “operational problems” as a result of emerging from the crisis.

“In the United States, there is a huge shortage of pilots, which is forcing many U.S. companies to cancel flights to certain locations this summer, and there are not enough border police or customs or security guards.”

“What happened in Amsterdam was not good, it was very frustrating for us, very frustrating and unacceptable to our customers,” Smith added. “We will try to manage the situation better this summer and do everything we can with Shipol.”

Globally, “IATA” and “ICI Europe” both had the highest turnout in March 2022, the highest level since the onset of the epidemic in the aviation sector in March 2020, and the percentage of passengers that year fell by a third. .

Last March, despite the war in Ukraine, airports on the European continent received 65.9% more passengers compared to the same month in 2019, the organization said. This is a clear improvement over the 41% recorded throughout 2021.

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