'The global airline industry is heading into a dire staffing crisis'.
When airlines announced that they would be cancelling flights because of 'staff shortages' over the bank holiday weekend nobody lifted an eyebrow. This, we were assured, was because of the pandemic. Thousands of airline workers just didn't bother to go back to the industry after lockdown ended, preferring to get a job closer to home we were told.
Brexit too was given as a reason by at least one airline (Ryan Air) but the preferred 'reason' was that thousands of airline staff, on mass, decided they didn't want to work in the travel industry anymore. The result of staff not returning to work after furlough was that thousands of holiday makers were turned away at the airport with little or no real explanation.
First it was supposedly the Pandemic, then Brexit, and today a computer-glitch is said to have been the cause of a further 5000 people being turned away from the airport.
When the story keeps changing, it's usually because it's untrue.
To get a better understanding of what is occurring we need to go back to May of 2021 when Vaccines began being rolled out to the cohorts that included pilots and crew. It became compulsory for all airline staff to be fully vaccinated which straight away promoted some to leave the industry, whilst others attempted to delay the vaccination with legal challenges.
Pilots in particular, have to be in near perfect medical health to be licensed to fly and, increasingly, they were seeing vaccine injuries ending the careers of colleagues prompting many to refuse the jab and hope for a change in policy. That policy change didn't come.
A crisis has ensued, with more and more pilots reporting they took the jab only to suffer ill health as a result which has ended their career in the industry. The crisis hasn't been reported by the mainstream media of course, there would no doubt be panic if the public knew that the pilot flying them to Spain was likely to have a heart attack at the controls.
Last month the Global Aviation Advocacy Coalition, a group set up to represent Pilots, has released an open statement calling on airline regulators to publicly address the growing number of commercial pilots who are vaccine injured.
Calling it a "crisis in pilot health," signatories from Canada, UK, US, Australia, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and International aviation, medical, scientific and ethics bodies have published the open letter to bring awareness to vaccine injured commercial pilots.
"Pilots are trained to be careful analysts of their environment, recognizing risks and actively mitigating," reads the open letter.
"For many, their training and differential risk analysis led to concerns and negative conclusions regarding the compatibility of COVID-19 vaccination with health and flight safety."
"Not only did many pilots disagree with arbitrary requirements embodied in vaccination mandates, but they also saw risks in the unanswered questions and unjustified speed and pressure behind the vaccine rollouts. They lobbied their airlines and politicians, recommending caution and opposing mandates."
The statement claims civil aviation regulators, those ultimately responsible for the safe and secure transport of citizens, ignored their own safety recommendation advising against the use of new or unproven drugs by flight crews.
When the COVID-19 vaccine mandates arrived, "many pilots steadfastly refused — based on risk — and were subsequently put on unpaid leave or outright terminated," said the statement.
"Now, the global airline industry is heading into a dire staffing crisis. Thousands of other pilots were coerced into vaccination to provide for their families. This has taken a toll on their mental health."
"As sobering as all of this is, it merely set the stage for what we are now witnessing: a landscape which should greatly concern airlines and the travelling public."
The statement goes on to say:
"Failure to address this potential medical watershed will make the airlines and unions complicit in a culture shift that has rocked the aviation mantra of 'safety first, always.'"
The statement includes a list of 20 airlines that have pilots with vaccine injuries, including Air Canada, Air Transat and WestJet in Canada, and eight airlines out of the US.
The advocacy group, which represents thousands of pilots from more than 30 global airlines and more than 17,000 physicians and medical scientist around the world, is demanding airline regulators to publicly address the "crisis in pilot health" and "restore flight safety to what we once knew."
But, no, according to the BBC it's computer-glitches, Brexit and Furlough that has caused the lack of staff and holiday chaos...