Unforeseen demand for international flights cause cancelation of hundreds of flights

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Many airlines betted on employees returning in hordes when travel started to meaningfully resume in 2022 and rapidly increased their Spring/Summer schedules as a result, says GlobalData. However, the leading data and analytics company notes that airlines should have learned from the pandemic that nothing is certain in the current climate.

Ralph Hollister, Travel and Tourism Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “It is understandable why airlines rapidly increased their Spring/Summer schedules for 2022, as vaccination programs displayed strong progress in many key markets for the travel industry, resulting in booking confidence increasing in 2021. However, many airlines have found it difficult to hire, vet, and train new staff members to meet the unforeseen demand for international flights from travelers and are now having to cancel hundreds of flights.”

Airlines such as Delta, Wizz Air, and easyJet have already, or are set to, reduce their Spring/Summer schedules due to scaling issues. When looking specifically at easyJet, it was announced in November 2021 that the airline was adding thousands of extra seats on flights to Greece for the Summer of 2022. However, when looking at easyJet’s hiring trends on GlobalData’s Job Analytics Database, the company was not increasing its number of job postings (active jobs) on its career pages, either in the month of November 2021 or in the months leading up to this announcement.

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