Airlines around the world that received pandemic bailout money or benefited from government-supported furlough schemes hoped to avoid such headaches. They started planning their full return to the skies almost as soon as they were largely grounded in early 2020.
This year, carriers starved of revenue planned big capacity increases for the spring and summer. But some of the steps they took to shrink in 2020 have proved to be hard to reverse. They found they couldn’t staff back up quickly enough, in an industry that requires both background checks and training for new workers, sometimes involving time spent on flight simulators.
“We stretched ourselves to try and grab and secure as much of the revenue pie as we could,” said Ed Bastian, chief executive of Delta Air Lines. “We did get caught off guard, as I think everyone in the industry did to some degree.”