Airlines across the globe have dramatically reduced their Spring/Summer schedules due to operational instability. Overselling is one of the root causes of this trend as the sector looks to recoup losses from the pandemic as quickly as possible.
Factors such as staff shortages, lengthy vetting procedures, and high levels of employee sickness have not helped airlines cope with sky-high demand for international travel since the turn of Spring. Many airlines betted on employees to return in hordes when travel started to meaningfully resume in 2022, COVID-related sickness not to be an issue, and for demand from travelers to gradually creep back up to pre-pandemic levels over the coming years. These bets have not come in and as a result, airlines such as Delta, Wizz Air, easyJet, and Tui Airways have already, or are set to, reduce their Spring/Summer schedules.
Hiring increased after raft of new flights
It is understandable why airlines rapidly increased their Spring/Summer schedules for 2022. Vaccination programs displayed strong progress in many key markets for travel and tourism, and booking confidence increased in 2021 as a result. When looking specifically at easyJet, it was announced in November 2021 that the airline was adding thousands of extra seats on flights to Greece for the Summer of 2022. However, when looking at easyJet’s hiring trends on GlobalData’s Job Analytics Database, the company was not increasing its number of job postings (active jobs) on career pages, either in the month of November 2021 or in the months leading up to this announcement. However, it is evident in the months leading up to the busy summer period of 2022, easyJet significantly increased its hiring activity, with the number of active jobs increasing by 79.3% when comparing November 2021 with April 2022. This is when airlines started to realize the level of demand that would be present throughout the upcoming summer…