Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
If you want to get out of Germany these days, you have serious problems. Unfortunately, there are not enough people available at the airports to handle aircraft.
You stand for hours at a security checkpoint – the only one that is open – only to realize later that unfortunately you can no longer fly at all. Either because you cannot catch the flight on time or because the flight has been cancelled. Maybe because no more pilots could be found. Or no flight attendants. Meanwhile, ticket prices are rising because fuel is expensive and flights are generally scarce.
The airlines are said to be a little overwhelmed because they laid off so many people during the pandemic and are now failing to hire many people. I have to admit, when I see passengers shouting abuse at airport security, I don’t feel like being an airport security myself.
It’s a job anyway, where you have to work all the time to make sure nothing happens. Thousands of suitcases are x-rayed, water bottles and Swiss army knives are picked out of side pockets, and in rare cases pistols and machetes are salvaged from hand luggage. Usually nothing happens – except that passengers are annoyed. How are you supposed to get excited about a job like this?
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So in the end we stay down because no one wants to do the awkward work. I recently read that security forces at the airport don’t earn that badly. At least more than in many other professions. So people don’t want to do jobs that treat them unkindly all day, even for good money.
More columns by Tillmann Prüfer
It wasn’t that long ago that many who are now grumbling at the airports demanded that flying should no longer be taken for granted and that it should generally become more unpleasant. For the sake of the climate and the planet. Maybe now is just the time to internalize that. That taking off in an airplane is not a matter of course, but a damn miracle!
And one can take comfort in the fact that every canceled holiday flight fans our heated planet a little bit of coolness. If we thought about it, maybe we would all be more relaxed and friendly at the airport, centered within ourselves.
And then it would also be a much nicer, more desirable job as a security assistant at the airport, screening people who are at peace. Everyone would want to do that. And then we’d be waiting just as long at check-in as the friendly passengers chatted constantly with the enthusiastic security staff.
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