“Some companies prepared better, others less. There are fewer staff, so they work more, trade union movements, i.e. strikes by railway and airline workers.’[1]

Adina Valyan, European Commissioner for Transport

At the beginning of July, I boarded a plane from Otopeni, a KLM flight, for a short vacation to the Netherlands. When I planned the trip, two months in advance, it was already obvious that the airlines and airports could not cope with the influx of travelers.

So I followed good advice on this one: I avoided the budget companies (but I took an extra €130 out of pocket for two seats) and chose to race in the morning, first thing in the morning. Besides, I left for the airport four hours before. I found Otopeni crowded and not very so; there was a small queue at the border police, but I avoided it by going through the new automatic gates with my passport (there are quite a few, but I understand what others are setting up). I think half of the trips, including ours, were late, but from 5 to 20 minutes, no more.

A week ago, I was waiting at the airport for my daughter, whose Air France flight from Paris landed after midnight, about ten minutes late. Her flight was full of emotions, as the strikes at Charles de Gaulle and Orly seem to have ended only a few days ago. But everything was fine, except for her checked luggage, which arrived with only two wheels intact, a third cracked and a fourth cut. After emptying it could be thrown away.

If my personal experience of summer flights did not differ from the pre-pandemic years, this does not mean that I also did not encounter unpleasant experiences: at least two cases of loved ones who woke up due to canceled flights, that is, due to low-cost companies, came to my attention by force of circumstances, with with some of the most surprising and unpleasant details. We concluded that it was easy and decided that until the end of the year we will look for vacation offers closer to us to drive.

The situations created at the airports and the hundreds of canceled flights are the natural result of the collision between the demand for services, which has suddenly increased from day to day, from consumers, who suddenly found, in turn, that the states with generous tourism offers abandoned the restrictions , assigned to combat the pandemic, and therefore have free time for vacation. They were naturally joined by businessmen eager to resume business trips, having so much time to recover from the pandemic.

But not everything has a rational explanation. Many airlines are true, most of them in the low-cost sector, which is more vulnerable than alliances[2] among major airlines – began to sell more and more, thus encouraging travel brokers to stimulate customers with offers. From the beginning, no one doubted whether airports, especially large hubs, could withstand this explosion of takeoffs and landings after two years of the pandemic.

We all know that the market adjusts to the excesses, only that the adjustment was made at the expense of the buyer who woke up with a canceled flight; and a canceled flight carries with it not only a ruined vacation, but also perhaps a missed assignment, a missed conference or exam, surgery, or lost connection for another race, and so on. Customers wrote complaints and demanded money back. Regulators and market watchdogs stepped in and imposed fines, after which vulnerable airlines began to face bankruptcy.

The post-pandemic and desperate need for some to return to profit through irrational sales promotion is the context, but this is in turn clarified by other developments that are putting pressure on airlines and airports: the energy price crisis (which made fuel ), sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation and Belarus after the invasion of Ukraine and the ban on flights from the conflict zone and sanctioned states.

Is it any wonder that airport staff responded to union calls for a strike, as inflation cut their wages just as employers were asking them to work overtime to cope with the rapid increase in traffic? On the contrary, as if it couldn’t be more natural: a strike achieves its goal when the employer can be squeezed out of the door, conceded in favor of the workers.

But those of us who take it for granted that with the click of a mouse we can buy a plane ticket at a price we can afford, at any time and to any destination, do we have too high expectations? regarding the field of the irrational? Perhaps formulating, without thinking, the thought “I’ve been limited enough during the pandemic, now I want to leave, and don’t tell me it’s impossible!” we make exaggerated claims, but fundamentally refuse to take such blame.

In addition to these considerations, it is useful to analyze how this history was written and is still being written, in a brief overview that highlights what was not difficult to intuitively understand, namely that the “V” return of business mass tourism is impossible.

A LITTLE TASTE

Bucharest Airports National Company announced that 823 flights had delays of more than 30 minutes between July 21 and 27, 55 more than last week. The most delays were recorded on Wizz Air (245 flights), TAROM (136 flights), Blue Air (138 flights) and Ryanair (103) flights. In total, airlines canceled 24 flights: 4 Wizz Air, 1 Ryanair and 19 other airlines. In total, 2,380 flights were performed at the Henri Coanda airport during the specified time period, of which 2,181 were regular and 79 non-regular.[3]

Kiwi.com claims that the autumn months will see airfares drop by 12.6% in September and 34.4% in October and November respectively.

Kiwi.com also shows that Romania saw a 4.09% increase in flight cancellations in June-July this year, compared to 1.39% in April-May 2022. At the same time, there is a voluntary increase in the level of cancellations by passengers, which reached 4.58% in the last two months compared to 3.63% in April and May.

As for the situation in Europe, the number of bookings registered on the online platform for the month of July doubled compared to the same period in 2021; Romanians are in 6th place, after the French and Germans, but before the Americans or the Spanish. Also, at the European level, the level of flight cancellations by airlines is 4.19% in June and July, which is almost twice as much as in April-May (2.32%).

Based on its own calculations, Ziarul Financiar estimated that by the end of 2022, Romanians could spend 6 billion euros on holidays abroad (more than 2% of GDP, i.e. the defense budget), which is a record amount, despite the alarming news. about the crises we are going through. The determination of Romanians to go on holiday abroad has already brought, according to the BNR, a deficit of 1.1 billion euros in the tourism sector for the first five months of the current year.[4] Favorite destinations of Romanians in the summer of 2022 – Top 5 – Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Greece and France.[5]

The deficit of the tourism sector is only one aspect of Romanians’ longing for the duke, and not just him, but Westerners in general in the post-pandemic period. Another aspect is the congestion of transport networks, especially airports, because everyone wants to quickly get to where they are going to satisfy their desire to rest.

HOW DID WE GET THE AVIATION CRISIS?

Analysis published by the European Parliament’s Research and Documentation Service[6] warned at the beginning of July this year. that this summer will be difficult for the tourism sector, given the lifting of restrictions during the pandemic, and their re-introduction is possible due to the revival of the sub-option Omicronrising fuel prices, strikes by airport staff and the war in Ukraine, although demand for services continues to grow, which will also be problematic.

Figures from Eurostat show that the continent’s first lockdown in the spring of 2020 brought the tourism business close to zero. Later, closer to the summer, business recovered a little, but in conditions where cross-border tourism prevailed. From spring 2020 to spring 2021, demand for accommodation fell by 80% in Malta, by 78% in Spain, by 74% in Greece, and air passenger losses amounted to 2.7 billion passengers.

In the first quarter of 2022, the growth in tourism demand became significant; in Europe, the demand for domestic housing doubled, and for housing in other countries – more than six times. Obviously, the demand for air travel also exploded: in May of this year THERE[7] reported an increase in demand for air transportation by 83.1%, and by the end of June by 68.7%.

The war in Ukraine hit tourism. These two countries accounted for 75 million tourists (5% of global demand) before the conflict and the pandemic, which has now ended. Sanctions regarding the use of airspace were introduced against the airlines of the Russian Federation, which led to the termination of air traffic, especially long-haul ones. The conflict and sanctions imposed on Russia led to an 80% increase in the price of aviation fuel, food and energy, which affected the cost of tourist services.

European Transport Commissioner Adina Valean held several meetings with those responsible for the air transport sector to identify the main causes of disruptions in the sector and find common solutions. The commission insisted on better coordination and promotion of information exchange and asked those responsible to take swift action in this regard. Continue reading the article on Contributors.ro