: Travellers land in airport chaos across the world #IndiaNEWS #National,Human Interest/Society, New Delhi, July 23 (IANS) Air travellers are facing chaos across the globe. Since May, US airlines have

Travellers land in airport chaos across the world #IndiaNEWS #National ,Human Interest/Society,
New Delhi, July 23 (IANS) Air travellers are facing chaos across the globe. Since May, US airlines have cancelled more than 21,000 flights, or about 2. 7 per cent of the scheduled total.
Winding queues and piles of abandoned luggage are becoming an increasingly common sight in airports across Europe, Euro News reported.
Airlines have cancelled tens of thousands of flights since May, leaving passengers stranded, while airports have struggled with industrial action and technical glitches.
The July 4 weekend an American holiday has seen hundreds of flights cancelled and more than 12,000 delayed.
However, the number of cancellations still pales in comparison to the European total.
Europe had more than double the cancellations of US carriers between April and June, data from flight tracking company RadarBox. com revealed, Euro News reported.
Between April 1 and June 29, Europes top 10 worst performing airports cancelled a mammoth 64,100 flights.
The reason has partly to do with staffing. US airlines also slashed staff during the pandemic, making 90,000 workers redundant. However, most American carriers including big hitters American, Delta, United and SouthWest started recruitment in the middle of 2021, in line with the return of domestic travel.
Another key point is that due to less vigorous and varying Covid restrictions between states, US flight numbers didnt drop as significantly as those in major European countries, Euro News reported.
European airports are struggling to cope with an extreme staffing deficit.
At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, airports and airlines made roughly 191,000 European aviation workers redundant.
According to a study published in January 2021 by the European Transport Workers Federation, 58. 5 per cent of airport ground staff were at work at the time. At least 23 per cent of them were made redundant, Euro News reported.
Airports like Heathrow and Schiphol have begged airlines to cut flights, while many carriers have been forced to pre-emptively cull their schedules by thousands of trips.
Making these cancellations is not something we take lightly, former Chief Operating Officer of easyJet, Peter Bellew, had told the staff after cutting dozens of flights.
Heathrow Airport earlier this month introduced an unprecedented 100,000 limit on daily departing passengers until September and ordered airlines to stop selling summer tickets as the airport battles against a staffing crisis, Daily Mail reported.
The dramatic move will impose a maximum limit on the number of passengers allowed to leave the airport between July 12 and September 11.
Airlines had planned to operate flights with a daily capacity averaging 104,000 seats over that period meaning further cancellations are likely, Daily Mail reported.