That Was The Week That Was 13-17 June 2022
Stop Looking! We have found the scapegoat!
Last week, regular readers will recall, we noted that the airlines’ behaviour, assuming because they had passengers keen to travel, other people – the little people – would just make sure that it was all going to be fine. This is what the airlines consider the ‘better’ to be in what ICAO might call a long-term aspirational goal to build back better. Please.
The never wrong and always on the mark about aviation consulting firm McKinsey in a burst of creativity that I can only envy from afar is calling the unpenting of the pent-up travel as ‘revenge travel’. On whom travellers are extracting revenge is not clear at all. The pandemic presumably. Pow! Zap! Smash! Take that pandemic!
The more measured view of the situation is that it is the airlines that are taking revenge on travellers who had the gall, the temerity to not travel during Covid. How dare they! Or maybe it is the airport and airline staff, tired of years of their salaries and benefits being driven down and being ignored, that are extracting revenge by going and getting more glamorous jobs at fun factories like Amazon warehouses – sorry, fulfilment centres. However, if that was the case, the ever-on-the-ball McKinsey would be calling this revenge not travel, surely.
Nonetheless, this week, the week that was, saw a number of airports step in and take some sort of control. They are limiting the number of flights airlines can operate. Still, no doubt, the European Commission and IATA will assure us that there is nothing wrong with the slots regime. Nothing wrong at all. Amsterdam started restricting flights; so did Gatwick. Others are likely to follow.
But, somehow, as far as the airlines are concerned, this is not their fault. There has to be a scapegoat out there. Well, stop looking! We have found the perfect scapegoat. Aliens. Yes, aliens! An alien spaceship came and stole the workers! Somehow, if the aliens can fly to earth, you would hope that their airport procedures were more automated and hands free than most of ours, meaning that would not need workers, but who knows? You have to admit, this is not something that you expect to see every day. Better than ‘my dog ate my homework’ by a very long chalk. Up there with being ambushed by a cake. Admittedly, this report is on the Daily Mail, so caution is advised, but frankly, this one has the ring of certainty about it.
Not a million miles from the aliens line is the line from BA’s wonderfully named Director of corporate affairs, Lisa Tremble, that it is very complicated and there is no way to connect the aggressive firing (and rehiring on much lower packages) of staff and the shortage. Scroll down the article to the video of the interview. The Chair of the Commons committee pressed three times, and three times it was much too complicated, according to Tremble. BA has a wonderful history of nominative determinism. For many years its fleet planning guru was one Rob Muddle.
This is creative, at least, so we should encourage more it. After all the alternative would be well-paid jobs in the aviation industry and outside of the C-suite, that just is not on! No, outsourced ground-handlers are clearly the problem here.