In case you missed it, air travel this summer has been more than a mess – summed up by headlines about an airline ferrying a thousand bags between London Heathrow and Detroit. Flights have too often become a purgatory for many passengers, as well as airline employees, resulting in an unbearable, long and hot summer.
We’ve heard a host of reasons, including an increase in demand from travelers after spending two years sheltering in place, sick leave and technical meltdowns.
But according to business and government watchdog Accountable.US, the commercial aviation industry has only reaped what it has sown over the past two years. The group’s research concludes that the management of the largest US air carriers must bear much of the blame for this chaos. Continued mistreatment of employees, Accountable.US insists, has created a continued labor shortage after it treated its workforce poorly with low wages, long hours and minimal benefits.
This cluster, otherwise known as America’s airline industry, became infected two years after the companies accepted a total of approximately $54 billion that the federal government handed out to keep these companies afloat during the worst time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of the deal the federal government reached with the airlines was that employees would not be laid off or laid off until the fall of 2021.
The problem was that tens of thousands of airline workers were laid off after the terms of that bailout expired, and the rest is history. Airlines started reporting quarterly profits in 2021. Airlines expected more profits in 2022. Airlines expected a robust air travel season in 2022. But then airlines did not have the employees needed to handle the massive nationwide cabin fever that has erupted over the past. several months, so airlines started canceling flights. The resulting stories, of course, will live forever on TikTok and Instagram.
Airlines may counter that they did not lay off employees, but rather that they handed out “voluntary redundancies”, “early retirement packages” or simply could not afford to keep it on their payroll – literally the next day – once the federal CARES program is over.
As air travel news soured in 2022, airlines blamed flight cancellations and delays on bad weather and problems with air traffic control systems. The problem with that argument, however, is that data suggests that 40% of all air travel delays from January to April 2022 were due to circumstances within the airlines’ control, said Senators Edward J. Markey and Richard Blumenthal last month in a public statement. .
“If an airline cancels a flight for any reason, it must promptly refund passengers, as required by law,” the senators added. “As the July 4 holiday approaches, the reliability of the air transportation system should not be on hold.”
We know what has happened since, as nearly 29% of July 1 flights were delayed or cancelled.
Long before the airline industry found itself in the middle of this summer’s turmoil, doubts had been cast about the effectiveness of the federal government’s multi-billion dollar lifeline. In September 2021, the Washington Post and other media reported that US airlines had laid off a total of about 56,000 workers, despite those companies’ pledge not to lay off employees.
“I think it’s fair for taxpayers and Congress to ask, ‘What did you do with that money? December. “The bailout money was specifically designed so that the airlines would not have a shortage of work. Although they did not lay off people, they laid off many employees. early retirement and now we see the results.
Image Credit: Clay Banks via Unsplash
