“Summer peaks are yet to come”
Fraport boss is preparing for more chaos weeks
07/06/2022 11:31 am
Anyone who wants to fly these days needs strong nerves. As far as passengers are concerned at Germany’s largest airport in Frankfurt, this is likely to remain the case for a while. Fraport boss Schulte warns of further tricky weeks and admits that he misjudged the personnel situation in the Corona crisis.
According to the operator, the handling problems at the largest German airport in Frankfurt will continue for several months. Fraport CEO Stefan Schulte said that the current level would remain the same for another two to three months and that more flights would have to be cancelled. With a view to the start of the school holidays in Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate on July 23, he said: “The summer peaks are yet to come.”
In cooperation with the main customer Lufthansa, several hundred flights have already been canceled in Frankfurt for the months of July and August. The airport’s maximum hourly capacity was reduced by 10 to 94 movements per hour in order to improve handling of the remaining flights. This is necessary to keep the system stable, said Schulte. “So far we have avoided total chaos.”
There is a relatively high level of unpunctuality and long waiting times, especially for luggage, for which Schulte apologized to the passengers. The loading of departing aircraft and the luggage of transit passengers is currently being prioritised. Those who end their journey in Frankfurt therefore sometimes have to wait two hours for their suitcases. Additional effort arises when the passengers leave the airport without luggage because the luggage then has to be delivered later. The passenger checks went relatively smoothly.
Schulte admitted that he had misjudged the development in the course of the Corona crisis. However, the emigration of low-income employees could not be prevented even with increased short-time work benefits, because these people are also dependent on shift allowances. They would have looked for jobs in other sectors.
According to Schulte, Fraport has hired almost 1,000 new people since late summer 2021, but has a need for several hundred more. Schulte said he was grateful to Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) that temporary workers from Turkey could now be recruited quickly. Although he reckoned that their deployment would be a further two months away, that was also an important relief. In any case, the demand for industrial workers will increase sharply in the coming years.