The Most Important Airline Story of 2022

25.08.2023 - 14:25 / skift.com / Ed Bastian / Delta Air Lines / Edward Russell / Helane Becker / Airlines

In hindsight, we should have known the mess that was air travel in 2022 was coming. Airlines kicked off the year canceling tens of thousands of flights amid the surge in Omicron variant cases that kept crews at home, and travelers — unfortunately — on the ground.

“The environment we’re navigating is among the most difficult we’ve faced,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told staff in a memo on New Year’s Day 2022. 

Despite that warning, many in the industry — this reporter included — believed that most of the issues would be righted by summer. Yes, the U.S. pilot shortage would mean fewer flights than in 2019, particularly to smaller cities. And other constraints, like the availability of new aircraft, could also pose some limits. Airlines were not expected to make a full recovery but they were forecast to get close.

That, as we now know, did not happen. It turns out that spinning back up a complex, global industry that moves millions of people daily takes a while. And it’s a lot harder to do than putting it down, as we saw in 2020. Now, a year on, we’re all a little bit wiser and sager, but also jaded and hardened to the realities of aviation in the 2020s.

Signs of the troubles to come began in the spring. Airlines were forecasting aggressive summer schedules — many at or above 2019 levels in the U.S. — with executives touting robust travel demand. Even business travelers, that elusive creature that had been slow to return to the skies amid Covid fears, were beginning to hit the road again. Then JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines had operational meltdowns in April, and Alaska Airlines in May; Delta pulled down its schedule to avoid meltdowns; and American Airlines and United Airlines quietly flew less than previously planned.

And across the Atlantic the situation was even worse. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, the home base of KLM, began asking travelers to stay home to avoid congestion and then began officially limiting the number of passengers airlines could fly in June. London’s Heathrow airport was overcome by luggage in June, and was forcing airlines to cancel flights by July. Frankfurt was also capping flights in July.

And thus air travel in 2022 was, to put it bluntly, a hot mess.

“The industry … asked some employees to take voluntary leaves during the worst of the pandemic and many of those people have found other careers, so they aren’t coming back,” Cowen & Co. analyst Helane Becker wrote in June. And while she referred to airlines directly, the same was true with many key supporting functions, including baggage handlers, air traffic controllers, and airport security personnel.

That aviation ecosystem wide staffing situation was widely underestimated. Even European airline CEOs were talking