Lack of staff: are the airports to blame for the chaos?

The aviation industry has been criticized for the chaos at German airports. Are the “outsourcing” of ground services and layoffs causing the problems?

The summer holiday season has started with a test of nerves for many travellers. At Düsseldorf Airport, thousands of people waited in huge queues at check-in and in front of the security check. At the airports in Hamburg and Munich, there was chaos during baggage handling. The anger among the vacationers was great.

7200 jobs are missing at airports

The airlines and the airport operators justify the conditions with the lack of staff. According to the Institute of German Economics, 7,200 employees are currently missing at German airports. According to the airport association ADV, a fifth of ground services positions are currently vacant. Many have changed jobs and gone to parcel delivery services.

The staff shortages are also dramatic at the airlines: According to estimates, a good 15 percent of the ground staff are missing. In addition, there is a historically high sickness rate of currently 40 percent.

criticism of the industry

Who is to blame for the travel chaos? Criticism comes from the federal government that the aviation industry could have prevented the disaster at an early stage. The tourism officer Claudia Müller (Greens) accuses airport operators and airlines of massive mistakes in personnel planning. It was to be expected that after two years of the pandemic, many people would want to travel again.

The state helped airlines and airports in the Corona crisis with massive economic aid, said Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD). “It would have been the task of the companies to take sufficient precautions.”

Fraport has cut thousands of jobs

In fact, airports laid off ground staff during the crisis or did not increase short-time work. Fraport has drastically reduced its workforce by around 4,000 jobs by 2021. 1,200 of the 3,700 people had to leave the ground handling services of the Fraport subsidiary Fraground alone. Fraport laid off so many employees during the crisis that too few employees will be available when the flight business recovers, criticizes Christoph Miemietz from the Verdi union. “That was short-sighted.”

Fraport has now reacted to the new situation. And creates jobs again. “This year we want to hire up to 1,000 new employees in the group for baggage and ground handling activities,” a company spokeswoman said tagesschau.de. So far, 870 new employees have already been reinstated. However, it will still take a moment before these bring a noticeable relief.

Therefore, Germany’s largest airport operator has called on employees from the administration to help out voluntarily in the terminal and on the apron. More than 100 have signed up and are now doing training. The measures in Frankfurt also included flight cancellations or the relocation of flights by airlines to times with less traffic, the Fraport spokeswoman explained.

Unions criticize austerity measures

The unions accuse the aviation industry of exaggerated savings. “Short-time work and downsizing without any foresight for a possible recovery of air traffic was the top priority for most managing directors,” complains air traffic controller unionist Matthias Maas. The personnel situation is significantly better among the air traffic controllers of German air traffic control because there have been no short-time work and layoffs.

The airlines are massively playing off their market power and want to commission the ground handling services on the cheapest possible terms, complains aviation expert Cord Schellenberg. “We are currently experiencing how much the quality suffers as a result.” The work at the check-in counter or in the baggage room at the airport forms the basis for functioning air traffic. According to Schellenberg, this is no longer recognized and maintained by the airlines.

External companies responsible for security checks

In fact, the staff shortage is also homemade. The outsourcing trend has contributed to the current summer chaos. The operators of the large airports such as Frankfurt, Cologne-Bonn and Berlin have handed over their responsibility for ground services and security checks to external companies. The employees have now “run away” from them.

The general manager of the Airport Association (ADV), Ralph Beisel, cannot understand the criticism of “outsourcing”. “The liberalization of ground handling services was not the idea of ​​the airports, it was an initiative of the European Union in 1996,” he says tagesschau.de. The wheel can no longer be turned back. “It is important to the airports that competition in loading services does not come at the expense of employees or quality,” says Beisel. “That’s why the employers have offered the unions the conclusion of a sectoral collective agreement with a uniform minimum wage.”

Liberalization wanted by politicians

At the major airports, at least one contractor is licensed for ground services. At Berlin Airport there are even three private companies that are competing for orders from the airlines. In Frankfurt, the airport competes with a private service provider through its own subsidiary Fraground. The federal police at the major German airports, with the exception of Bavaria, are responsible for handling the security checks at the airports. The control activities are carried out by so-called government-appointed aviation security assistants who are employed by private service providers. The airport only rents the control areas to the federal police at cost price.

The ADV general manager Beisel shows himself opposite tagesschau.de open to a redistribution of tasks in aviation security checks. “Overall, the federal police are doing a good job organizing passenger and hand luggage checks,” he says. “Nevertheless, we believe that we are closer to the operative business.” The airport operators are therefore offering to take over the control of the private service providers in the future. “We are happy to talk to the Federal Ministry of the Interior about this. But first we have to do everything we can together with the Federal Police to get through the summer well.”

Waiting times not everywhere

The example of the small Saxon airports Leipzig-Halle and Dresden shows that there is another way. “Bottlenecks in handling and service personnel, which have sometimes led to waiting times of hours at other airports, currently exist neither in Dresden nor in Leipzig/Halle,” explains a spokesman for Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG. The reason: No staff had to be laid off during the pandemic and the personnel situation is stable.

And in other EU countries, such as Italy, there is currently no chaos at the airports. Experts also attribute this to the fact that ground staff were not “outsourced” but are permanently employed.