Travel chaos: As Qantas asks executives to work as baggage handlers, which are the best and worst airlines for flight cancellations?
- Australia’s flag carrier calls for 100 managers and executives to volunteer as the aviation industry struggles to cope with demand after pandemic curbs ease
- Supercharged rebound has overwhelmed even the largest airlines that can’t hire fast enough to keep up – it may be months before normal levels of service return
As the entire aviation industry struggles to deal with a rebound in travel demand as pandemic curbs ease, Australia’s largest airline Qantas has asked its executives to haul luggage full-time for three months to ease the chaos.
The flag carrier is calling for at least 100 managers and executives to volunteer in the programme starting in mid-August, the airline’s Chief Operating Officer, Colin Hughes, told staff in a memo. The role will see them loading and unloading luggage from aircraft, as well as sorting and scanning bags. Volunteers need to be “physically capable of moving and lifting bags of up to 32kg in weight”, according to the note.
The development comes as Qantas – along with the rest of the aviation industry – battles to cope with a high passenger turnout amid easing pandemic restrictions.
Passengers flying with Virgin Australia and Dutch carrier KLM are suffering some of the biggest disruptions to travel, schedules show.
Zeroing in on a group of 19 airlines around the world – the same one Qantas Airways uses to assess its performance against peers – Virgin Australia cancelled the biggest proportion of flights in the three months through July 26, according to data from analytics company Cirium. It axed close to 2,200 flights, or 5.9 per cent of its schedule, compared with 1.4 per cent in the same period in 2019.
Air New Zealand, Qantas and Deutsche Lufthansa – Europe’s biggest airline – rounded out the five that cancelled flights most often in the period. Singapore Airlines had the best record, scrapping just 0.1 per cent of planned services.