WILL AIRPORTS KILL AIR TRANSPORT?

Let us not hide our faces. The situation is currently dramatic and will become even more so in the coming weeks. The main cause lies in bottlenecks that do not make access to aircraft smooth for passengers. And we can take the subject wherever we want, we will always be faced with the responsibility of airports. In fact, this is obviously not the case for all platforms, but for the most important ones, in other words those that host an airline hub.

?Airport services must have been used recently to measure the extent of the damage. It is not a question here of naming this or that installation, the phenomenon can be seen regardless of the country. In question, the lack of anticipation of the managers as to the resumption of the activity. Scalded by the sad experience of 2020 where after a summer in serious recovery, traffic collapsed again in the fall, decision-makers were more than cautious in the face of expectations of recovery which were nevertheless largely predictable. In fact , the traffic started again in a dazzling way, as if we had opened the lid of a pressure cooker in which we had boiled the impatience of thepassengers.

?The problem is that to make an airport work properly it is essential to make the passenger journey smoothly in a necessarily small space and where there are many obstacles to overcome. In a mess, access to car parks, then to terminals and then to primary security filters where they exist, then to check-in counters, then to screening checkpoints, then to customs and passport control posts, and finally to boarding, all these barriers are potential bottlenecks. The only way to avoid them is to put enough staff in each of them, provided that the facilities are adapted.

?Overall, airports are equipped to handle traffic spikes, provided that all facilities are operational. This is not always the case and many airports have not yet opened all their capacities, and for good reason they do not have the necessary staff to fill all the workstations. The case is complicated by the fact that the authorities are different depending on the functions between the police forces, the number of subcontractors, the employees of the companies and the employees of the airports. And coordination between them is not always easy, each defending its prerogatives and its own working conditions.

?But finally, we must recognize a lack of anticipation on the part of airport decision-makers. It was very likely that air traffic would pick up very strongly from the moment when the vast majority of populations were vaccinated, borders were going to open and health constraints were going to fall. However, during the pandemic many employees, often specialized, were forced to leave their jobs voluntarily or not. Replacing them was probably not an easy task, especially since the conditions of employment and salaries are not particularly attractive. It is therefore curious that recruitment has not started at the end of 2021, because training in many jobs is rather long and administrative approvals are often necessary and difficult to obtain. After all, an airport is a particularly sensitive place.

?The consequence is the almost impossibility of treating in a normal way the passengers who wait with an impatience that can well be understood the blessed moment when their flight will take off, with them on board of course. Instead, they are currently offered several hours of stress, while many are already apprehensive about flying, in comfort conditions that are simply unacceptable. However, we are only at the beginning of the summer season and the traffic peaks are far from being reached. The question that may then arise is: will the current air transport experience not discourage customers from travelling? Will they support repeating this experience? And then after the outward flight there is the return often from a foreign country where neither languages, nor habits nor cultures are familiar to them?

?There is the unfortunate impression that airports are overwhelmed and powerless to deal with the mass of customers who show up. We would very much like to be denied.