As vaccines continue to be distributed around the globe and hope grows that the COVID-19 pandemic will soon be behind us, the aviation industry is eager to come out of the pause imposed on it over the past year-plus. But, to do so effectively takes ensuring that the workforce is up to handle the post-pandemic air travel boon.
The industry’s recovery, and as such the workforce, is disparate with some locations faring better than others.
“Overall, I would say the situation is quite good, both in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and the U.S. or North America, and still quite bad in Europe and Latin America and in Africa,” says Fabio Gamba, director general, Airport Services Association (ASA).
While no region is back to pre-pandemic levels, Gamba notes that in Europe the workforce is still down 50 percent from where it was in 2019 – with some specific locations below 65 percent.
In the European Union (EU), Gamba says that it has been a series of ups and downs. During the summer of 2020, the industry looked promising with some seeing a light at the end of the tunnel as vacation-fueled travel picked up despite quarantine measures still in place at the time. Though this, in part, led to the EU experiencing its second wave of COVID-19, which Gamba says was easier to handle thanks to the lessons learned from the virus’ initial arrival. But now a third wave of the virus is having a substantial impact.
“I think what really hit us hard was the third wave, because even though that was not totally unexpected, that really depressed the whole industry, which was not in a position to really sustain for much longer these, let’s say, lockdown measures,” Gamba says.
Vaccination efforts have helped to temper the effects of COVID-19’s third resurgence and Gamba says ASA has been working in tandem with colleagues around the world to try and require that aviation personnel who are frontline be considered for inoculation immediately after health personnel.
“Which worked in some areas and worked less well in other areas, to be honest,” Gamba adds.
Michael France, managing director of safety and training, National Air Transportation Association (NATA), says that within the U.S., recovery has also been very locally dependent.
“Some areas we’re seeing slowdowns much larger than others. Other areas we’re seeing near steady business. So, each and every company is facing its own unique challenges relating to the traffic levels, workforce, any pandemic-related issues,” he says.
“I think right after the pandemic hit, the big concern amongst the FBOs specifically was, ‘Wow, we’ve got a lot of great, seasoned line service technicians. How do we maintain them?’ because they didn’t know what was to come,” adds Ryan Waguespack, senior vice president of aircraft management, air charter services and MROs, NATA. “Some places have seen a massive uptake in growth and traffic, destination type locations, and others have continued to be challenged on traffic and flow, as business travel has not yet returned.”
Factoring the Return
Despite the patchwork state it finds itself in, returning the industry to its pre-pandemic state is, on the surface, more straightforward – bringing back the passengers. It’s a task that is simultaneously simple and quite complex, says Gamba, and dependent on two factors. The first is coordination between nations.
“For instance, if a country or even a number of countries decide to have health passports implemented, then this health passport needs to be implemented in a way that is acceptable to the other countries, so that they need to have confidence among themselves. So that whenever someone goes to the airport with this passport, it shows that this person has done what it pretends it has done,” says Gamba.
The second factor is longer term and involves solving the puzzle of how a carrier from a country with fewer pandemic measures can fly to countries observing them.
“If this area is still in lockdown and some are in confinements, it is not appealing to people. Because if you’re flying there and then you realize that the whole, the hotel and restaurant sector is closed, it’s not attractive, right?” Gamba says, “And so, people would not fly there. We try to avoid these places. I’m not even talking about quarantines because that speaks for itself.
“So, I think it’s both a question of trying to restore flying confidence by showing that there is a harmonized coordinated way to make sure you can trust people who are flying, having gone through tests or for vaccination. And then to make sure that the degree of epidemiology of the countries that have opened up their frontiers is relatively similar,” Gamba continues. “Simple and complicated at the same time.”
Sans the return of passengers and the coordination needed to bring them back, the ground handling workforce will continue to stagnate or flourish depending on the localized state of a region’s aviation industry.
Though, passenger return is not the only factor that Gamba says is being eyed with trepidation.
“What we’re looking at really with some angst and anxiety is that we start receiving longer-term schedules from our customers, from the airlines. What was characteristic of the pandemic, especially in 2020, but we see that today as well, is that the airlines were postponing releasing schedules of their flights. And so, we would get a schedule from a customer at the very last moments, which makes it extremely complicated for a ground handler then to be able to adapt in the very short period of time,” Gamba explains.
This short notice can lead to bottlenecks, even with the limited number of flights taking place over the past year.
“So really, what matters to ground handlers, to airline contractors in general, is to get or to be in a possession of flight schedules long in advance, or long enough in advance. To be able to then adapt and have the right workforce ready at the right time. Otherwise, it makes no sense, right?” Gamba adds. “So, for us, that’s really what we’re looking at.”
He notes, though, that it all again comes back to restoring the passenger demand so airlines can return to business as it was pre-March 2020.
The Labor Problem
Barbara Hunt, VP of business operations, Advanced Air, located in Hawthorne, Calif., says they have had challenges filling both ground support and pilot positions at its FBO, with the pandemic affecting each group uniquely.
Prior to the pandemic, the pilot shortage in business aviation was felt by Advanced Air, but the shortage disappeared when COVID-19 struck the industry.
“When the pandemic took its toll on the travel industry as a whole and airlines specifically this changed drastically and almost overnight. Suddenly the pilot pool was filled with qualified and trained professionals seeking alternate employment,” says Hunt.
It’s been a boon for the time being, but Hunt knows that when the pandemic has ended, there will once again be a shortage.
“The airline industry will recover and these pilots who found temporary homes with Part 91 or 135 operators will be called back and will rejoin their initial career path. We need to be prepared for this by creating reasons for them to stay with us and partnering with larger cargo and passenger airlines to create a career path for attracting young people to the industry, training them and connecting them with the majors, if that is their goal,” she says.
When it came to the company’s ground handling needs, the inverse happened, Hunt details. A large pool of potential ground support personnel evaporated – and Hunt says she doesn’t foresee it returning quickly.
“For FBO ground support, we had a waiting list of potential candidates that virtually disappeared. As much as we would like to get people re-employed, we just do not see the same level of interest generated as there was prior to the pandemic. What changed and where these candidates went still remains somewhat of a mystery. Perhaps there is some level of concern in working for an essential business with potential front-line exposure,” comments Hunt.
Aside from the concern of working in a front-line role, Hunt suspects another factor is driving the dwindling interest in group support work.
She says that for some, collecting unemployment benefits higher than entry-level starting pay is creating an unexpected challenge for employers like Advanced Air.
“This situation will likely change in the coming months and we anticipate that qualified and available candidates will be ready to get back to work. In the meantime, our top priority is to ensure our pay structure and benefit packages remain competitive in the market, and we are focusing on safety training and use of technology to increase efficiencies,” Hunt adds.
Jason Sparks, director of field safety - west at Signature Flight Support, notes the challenges around rehiring talent is a trend that his company has seen, as well.
“Many businesses had to furlough employees while activity was down. In some cases, it has been a challenge to bring them back and now that many organizations are hiring, that brings another challenge to recruit top level talent and train them appropriately,” Sparks points out.
Wages, turnover and other labor-centric concerns have only been exacerbated by the pandemic, Gamba adds.
“Obviously, it’s always a holistic approach. If one element of the value chain is going through issues, then it tries to reverberate these issues onto the rest of the value chain. So obviously what we find out is that airlines which are in a predicament, just as the rest of the sector of, the industry are coming back to us and saying we need to be in solidarity with them.
“They argue that we should be able to perform the same job that we were doing before the pandemic, but at a lower rate. Otherwise, they threaten to not honour their commitments. So that has a very direct effect on the workforce, on the salaries, on the margins, on the profitability and then enhances on the interest or the attractiveness of this industry,” Gamba says.
France adds that pay is part of the equation for hiring and retaining employees, with the other side of the problem being creating a workplace people want to be a part of.
“Pay is part of that, but it’s not just about pay it’s about how do we provide people a path moving forward so that this is not just a job that they show up to and punch a clock, because if you’re setting yourself up as your employees being a commodity, then the employees are going to act like a commodity.
“They’re going to look for the highest dollar they can get with the easiest amount of output. But if you create a culture where they’re seen as a valued member of a team with an opportunity for their future, then that’s when, what we’re seeing anyway, that’s when you see turnover begin to decline and companies being successful at maintaining the workforce,” France says.
Hunt says that Advanced Air is getting back to pre-pandemic operations and is actively hiring in multiple departments, with as many as 10 new hires in the past month.
“We are optimistic that this trend will continue for several years but understand that the industry is cyclical and change will come again. Each time this industry is significantly impacted by world events, it creates an opportunity to learn and adapt. What we learn becomes part of a plan for the next cycle,” Hunt says.
Training for Tomorrow
What exactly the post-pandemic world will look like remains an unknown and it’s one of the major factors weighing on the industry.
“I think from a priority standpoint, FBOs and business in general is trying to understand this post-pandemic world and all of the uncertainty that is contained within it,” France says. “I think we all find ourselves having these discussions saying, ‘How has what’s happened over the last year going to impact the future going forward? Are we just going to curve slowly back upward to right where we were, or are we going to see some fundamental changes in the way we travel, or changes in the way we work?’
“We’ve seen a lot of investment in training through the pandemic lull, if we want to call it that. So, I think that kind of sets up where we are and what’s going through the minds of these businesses right now.”
Sparks adds that a thoughtful evaluation of the current training program update as necessary to fit the needs of today’s workforce is needed.
“If we consider corporate level employees, most switched to completely virtual environments which led to some people feeling video conference fatigue. Those employees missed the human and team connection so very important to find ways to get them involved outside of a virtual environment. Considering field level employees, while they were not in a virtual environment, many locations experienced lower than normal operations. These employees need to be refreshed on all policies and procedures, specifically focusing on situational and injury awareness as operations continue to increase,” he continues.
With the need being to regain passengers, cleanliness has become a top priority in the fight to restore travelers’ trust. Maintaining certain levels of cleanliness and making sure that facilities are attractive as business travelers come back has been some of the main feedback Waguespack has heard.
“About 90 percent of the travel through 2020 has been personal and now business travel is scheduled to start with an uptake in Q2. And the standards, what business travelers are looking for, it’s kind of a higher standard and so operators are having to look at how they address clients. Therefore, there is a ripple effect of how do we engage through the FBOs, right? Car rentals, black cars, etc.,” Waguespack says.
With that said, the downtimes that the pandemic has created has provided more time for training, specifically for things such as safety and cleaning. Training opportunities were further bolstered by the launch of the NATA Safety 1st Training Center last year.
“The training became a way to take advantage of that time and say, ‘Look, let’s invest in these employees and, and bring them onboard.’ Now, what we’re seeing is, especially with the rollout of the new safe diverse training center is it’s actually given businesses a chance to begin that process of moving from a more compliance-based training program into a truly continuous training model that can influence culture over time. Add to that, now the Safety 1st Clean and the recognition that how helping teams, they’re helping companies’ teams understand why business travelers are taking advantage of private in general, our business in general aviation and how important even the simplest little things like social distancing, and masks and cleaning and so on are to travelers that are taking advantage of what we have to offer,” says France.
Noting that recruitment and hiring is merely the beginning of the employment process, Hunt says a business must continually prioritize retaining employees and growing that person’s career.
“Initial and ongoing training is imperative to ensure our staff feels both confident and empowered. We have leaders in each of our business lines who are responsible for training, coaching and ongoing mentoring long after initial training has been completed,” Hunt says.
“We rely not only on our internal training programs, but also use all industry resources available to maintain and enhance proficiency in all areas,” she continues. “We have nurtured a learning and growing culture within the company so that employees with aspirations can see opportunities for career growth and are, in fact, encouraged to share their goals and desires so that we can help them achieve.”
