Since April, the company British Airways was already operating with a reduced number of flights. The roughly 10,300 layoffs are mainly due to a lack of staff – the company had cut 10,000 jobs at the height of the pandemic.
The recovery in demand was not anticipated. ” The resumption of air traffic is much greater than expected, notes François Vellas, professor of international economics at the University of Toulouse, tourism and transport expert with the United Nations, at the microphone of Marie-Pierre Olphand from RFI’s economy department. For example, between April 2022 and April 2021, the increase in international traffic was over 78% in terms of requests at the global level, but at the European level, it is over 300%. This shows that the airlines today are not able to sufficiently increase their offer. »
For the professor of international economics, the airlines laid off too many people at the time of the pandemic. Also now increasing their capacity is much more difficult due to lack of planes and crews. The airlines are therefore just in time and the slightest problem leads to the cancellation of flights. We see this in particular for low cost companies which have to face wage demands and are also forced to cancel a large number of flights.
► To read also: Air transport: chaos at European airports
Multiple repercussions
The consequences will be felt beyond the flights operated directly by the British company. Because British Airways is part of One World, one of the three major global alliances which brings together some fifteen airlines. ” These alliances are based on the code sharing system, code sharing, which means that, on an aircraft, the seats are sold by several companies with their own code, continues François Vellas. This means that when you have flights between London and New York, some of the seats are sold by American Air Lines under the American Airlines code and the passenger realizes that British Airways is the operator, often at the last moment. . From the moment that British Airways cancels flights, it also cancels the flights that are marketed on their behalf by all the companies that are part of this alliance. »
British Airways’ difficulties will mainly affect the North Atlantic lines and also the Middle East region since one of British Airways’ partners is Qatar Airways, which has very many flights to the whole of Asia, but also the Middle East and Africa.