he government has been merrily heaping blame for the chaotic scenes at British airports on the aviation industry. It’s all their own fault, so the briefing goes, it should have seen the upsurge in foreign holidays coming and it was perfectly happy to pocket government aid and furlough money while laying off thousands of workers that it now cannot persuade to return.
Well hang on a minute. While it’s certainly true that airlines and, in particular airports, have been caught on the hop. They did underestimate, perhaps bizarrely, the hunger for Spain and Greece after two years of Wales and Cornwall.
They have also for years been paying dismally low wages – sometimes below £10 an hour – for workers such as baggage handlers.
But it is far from all the industry’s fault. Heathrow alone lost more than £4 billion during the two years of the pandemic. It, Gatwick and the other major UK airports faced an existential financial threat during a period of constantly changing Covid rules.
Through some pretty skilful management they survived, but it was a close run thing. Lay on top of that the economy with acute labour shortage caused by Brexit and a whole range of other factors, as well as the protracted security clearance process, and it is not surprising that aviation is struggling to recover.
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High-end timepieces: the ones to watchThat is no comfort to the family waiting for hours to clear security or immigration, or learning that their flight has just been cancelled, London’s airports are far from perfect, but they have come a long way since the abject chaos of “Heathrow hell” and the snow shame of a decade or more ago.
Rather than a petty public blame game ministers should be collaborating calmly with industry bosses to fix this problem. Because, unlike millions of sun starved British holidaymakers, it is not going away.
