The miserable delays at UK airports were enough to put people
off flying for a long time – but with high travel demand
easily predictable there was no excuse for bosses getting it so
wrong.
Slight traffic and travel delays are to be expected when the
holiday season begins. Still, the chaotic scenes at airports across
the UK at the start of the Easter holidays and ongoing were on
another level – and it showed abysmal planning from a host of
leaders. The situation left holidaymakers – many of whom were
flying for the first time in over two years – understandably
angry.
Manchester Airport's Managing Director, Karen Smart, was forced
to resign after thousands of travellers complained about the
hours-long delays, from 5am, on social media, and piles of luggage
were stranded after people abandoned the wait to reclaim their
baggage to go home. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester,
even considered sending in the police and fire services to help
overwhelmed staff.
The Manchester Airport bosses apologised to passengers, saying they
had "fallen short of the standards they expected", but it
was the same story at other airports, including Heathrow and
Birmingham. The situation is not just limited to the airport
authorities but also their customers re the aviation industry as
they too are canceling flights due to staff shortages that are not
just a consequence of Covid related isolation.
The lack of trained employees and extra security layers, combined
with overbooked flights, created a perfect storm. Most
frustratingly, this could – and should – have been
avoided. And while promises are being made that things will improve
drastically by the summer, I wouldn't bet on it.
Granted, the aviation industry, in general, has struggled to
recruit staff made redundant after travel was shut down during the
pandemic. However, more effort should have been made a long time
ago to plan and better prepare for the predictable spike in demand.
If we work backwards from the need for staff to be in place, there
is a long process of recruitment, training security clearance etc.
Alongside this, a surge in demand causes the need for additional
security clearance staff to be recruited in advance. All of which
means that just like any other industry you have to plan the
end-to-end supply.
There are additional complicating factors that are also a hangover
from the pandemic. For example, I was at Heathrow the other day and
one airline company – who, ironically, I noticed is looking
for a Head of Integrated Planning (and it needs one) –
announced that passengers couldn't request seat changes, or
anything like that, because for the following two weeks all flights
were fully booked. In fact, they were overbooked, and more people
were turning up to fly than they could handle, as they were
expecting coronavirus-related dropouts. So the booking algorithm
needs updating – and quickly.
Warning for other industries
The chaos, which could put people off flying for a while and
therefore impact long-term profits, should serve as a warning to
leaders in other industries. In the airline industry, the problems
are more visible, but elsewhere potential – and likely
– challenges are not as obvious, and that's the danger.
For this reason, investment in foresight and horizon scanning is
now essential to reduce the reputational and financial damage of
bottlenecks, which lead to longer lead times and supply
issues.
The ongoing DVLA situation is another example of wrong-headed
thinking. There is a desperate need for people – especially
HGV drivers – to obtain driving licences, but the
organisation is seemingly reluctant to invest in new staff to clear
the backlog. Again, it's just because this has been in the
newspapers that we know about it. I worry that other industries and
businesses may well be sleepwalking into massive problems that are
possible to avoid.
And then there is the recent P&O scandal, which caused national
outrage. Sacking 800 workers and looking to replace them with
cheaper staff to cut costs and sailing ferries until they are
unsafe is another instance of a lack of foresight and poor
long-term strategy.
With new staff to train, how long will they be able to maintain
safety standards – if the boats are not on the water P&O
stand to lose a great deal of revenue – and how will the
customer experience change with poorly motivated and poorly paid
agency staff? Customer experience is vital today and investing in
that should trump the cost-cutting approach.
It's increasingly apparent in these complex and uncertain times
that leaders must not think short-term but much further into the
future to make critical decisions. I fear, though, that social
media feeds and newspapers will be full of more scandals caused by
poor planning in the coming weeks and months.
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