These school holidays, travelers will still see lengthy lines at the airports as domestic airports struggle to handle the volume of passengers and a major personnel shortfall.
The staff has warned that after a “wild week,” passengers in Victoria and Queensland have already endured lengthy waits and that things are “going to get worse.”
The hectic scenes have been attributed to understaffed check-in counters, long lines at security checkpoints, and a surge of passengers.
As travelers experience some of the busiest days the airports have experienced since the start of the pandemic, passengers have described the throng as “quite overwhelming.”
During these school breaks, Melbourne Airport was anticipating 2.1 million passengers, which represents an increase of 400,000 over Easter.
On the first Saturday of the break, after many travelers began arriving as early as 6am, shocking images from the city’s major airports revealed customers waiting in lengthy queues.
This week, Brisbane Airport saw a lot of traffic, which some people found “outrageous.”
On Friday afternoon, families from the ACT, Western Australia, and NSW will add to the mayhem.
The queues are outrageous, and it’s obvious that there are far too few employees working there, one traveler told The Courier-Mail last week.
When faced with such circumstances, one would ask, “How can we expect people to desire to travel?”
Compared to the same period in 2019, Virgin Australia predicted that passenger volumes will increase by 15% during these school breaks.
Additionally, it stated that numbers will be 10% higher than the prior Easter holidays.
Between June 27 and July 17, 2.1 million travelers were expected at Sydney Airport’s gates.
Just for this weekend, Qantas and JetStar anticipate 350,000 passengers.
According to a Qantas statement, “both airlines carried similar numbers of customers domestically last weekend for the commencement of school holidays in Victoria and Queensland.”
In order to minimize consumer interruptions over the holiday season, “both airlines have been putting in place steps to optimize their operations and working with airports and suppliers.”
The airline industry, which laid off 12,500 workers during the pandemic, has a skills crisis, according to the Transport Workers’ Union.
“Little action has been made since Easter to address the acute skills shortages we’ve witnessed in aviation caused by low wages, bad working conditions, and crumbling safety standards,” said Michael Kaine, national secretary of the TWU.
“The airports and airlines are putting immense pressure on the people who are still in the sector to fill gaps and keep the gears turning.”
Australians have begun utilizing the much anticipated chances that were not available to them in the months of 2020–2021.
As every state and territory worked to stifle the epidemic, holidaymakers were forced to postpone or cancel their travel plans and were left in isolation across the nation.
In February of last year, KPMG projected that “restless Australian would-be travelers” would emerge from hiding after the epidemic dealt the travel and tourism sector a severe blow.