Airports face renewed chaos due to autumn holidays

It looked even worse at the weekend at the capital’s airport Berlin-Brandenburg, where a marathon competition completely overwhelmed the employees. Even passengers who were at the counter four hours in advance missed their flight. The chaos at BER is expected to repeat itself next Monday. For the “Day of German Unity”, Airport Managing Director Thomas Hoff Anderson expects a significant rush of Berlin vacationers.

Not the vacationers, but “mismanagement and incompetence” are to blame for the misery, criticizes Özay Tarim from the Verdi service union. The bottlenecks in handling became apparent by spring at the latest, he says, but to date there has been no sign of a remedy.

Passenger numbers significantly below 2019 level

In Düsseldorf, the private company Deutscher Schutz- und Wachdienst (DSW) has hired 140 new people since then, but numerous colleagues have left the company at the same time. “There are 80 fewer employees there today than in June 2020,” reports Tarim.

The security company Securitas, based in Cologne/Bonn, which replaced the competitor Kötter there in June 2021 and took over its 586 employees, said it hired an additional 60 employees. According to Verdi, however, the sickness rate of around 25 percent has significantly reduced operational capability since then.

Alarm signals from the union, however, apparently went unheeded. “The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Police have completely disappeared,” observes Özay Tarim. In the end, they are legally responsible for the security checks.

All of this makes us fear the worst for the upcoming autumn holidays. According to its own statements, Cologne/Bonn Airport alone is expecting around 560,000 passengers during the holiday season – a quarter more than in 2021, but 20 percent fewer than in the last year before Corona, 2019.

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As a precaution, airport manager Thilo Schmid therefore warned on Monday of possible delays and waiting times in the coming days. “Together with all partners and service providers, we have prepared as best we can for the holidays to give our guests a good start to their vacation,” he said. “But we also know that the ongoing tense staffing situation in air traffic and at the service providers involved entails operational challenges.” It is advisable to be at the airport two and a half to three hours before departure.

Düsseldorf Airport is also expecting an increase of 39 percent in passenger numbers and 31 percent in flight movements compared to the autumn holidays last year. NRW’s largest airport expects almost 8,000 take-offs and landings and around 1.1 million passengers in the two holiday weeks. Compared to the 2019 holiday period, however, this is only a level of 76 percent in terms of passenger numbers and 71 percent in terms of flight movements – which nevertheless poses serious capacity problems for Rhein-Ruhr-Airport.

“Due to the unchanged overall situation throughout the industry,” said airport boss Thomas Schnalke on Monday, “there can still be delays and longer waiting times, especially at peak traffic times.” Passengers should therefore go to the security checkpoints two hours before departure. He did not provide any information about the additional waiting times in front of the check-in counters.

A remedy is not in sight for the time being. Securitas is currently looking for aviation security assistants for Cologne/Bonn Airport via the job exchange Indeed, for whom the company is promising an hourly wage of 19.81 euros. However, the advertised jobs are all part-time – probably in order to be able to use the employees at peak times. A secure income can hardly be achieved with it, criticizes Verdi. The crowd is correspondingly low.

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The Procurement Office of the Federal Ministry of the Interior has now sent the security companies DSW and Securitas initial warnings because they did not adequately fulfill the order of the Federal Police. So far, however, this has not had any concrete consequences. “As far as we know, a second warning for the two companies is in preparation,” reports Verdi expert Tarim. But even this would possibly only result in contractual penalties, a fundamental change in the security checks, for example in Düsseldorf or Cologne/Bonn, would not result from this.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior has signaled, says Tarim, that a thorough improvement is expected for the summer of 2023. “The government has already given up the autumn holidays, Christmas and the coming Easter festival,” says the Verdi expert.

“The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Police have completely disappeared.” Özay Tarim from the Verdi service union

However, the union considers the biggest mistake airports made to outsource security services. In practice, Verdi appears to be right. In Frankfurt, for example, where the airport handles passenger checks itself, such queues are a rarity. Munich is also a long way from the “unchanged industry-wide overall situation” claimed in Düsseldorf. Franz-Josef-Strauß-Airport is not controlled by a private company, but by a subsidiary of the Free State of Bavaria.

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