Holiday chaos awaits at Cologne/Bonn Airport: “It will be a disaster”
But already in the summer holidays of 2021 the number of passengers went up again. Nevertheless, Securitas ordered short-time work until the end of 2021. Özay Tarim is therefore not expecting anything good for the 2022 summer holidays: “It will definitely not be stress-free.”
Chaos before controls: “Security secures”
“It’s going to be a disaster,” predicts security officer Paul. Because flight operations have normalized, but not the number of staff at the controls. “The personnel situation has gotten worse because people were looking for other jobs during Corona.” There are also technical problems at the control lanes and a high level of sick leave.
The result is an enormous increase in workload: “You only see crowds of people in front of you and work like a machine.” Security suffers with this piecework work: “If I work faster, I may not check as thoroughly as I should,” says the long-time aviation security assistant.
Numerous checks by the Federal Police or Securitas create additional pressure. And of course the bad mood of the passengers: “You get yelled at, you get stupid comments,” reports Paul from his everyday work: “Colleagues are also threatened.”
Already 30,000 passengers a day
Cologne/Bonn Airport also sees an “acute need for action”. “We are working at all levels to ensure that suitable steps are taken to achieve visible improvements for passengers as quickly as possible and, above all, to avoid very long waiting times at the site at peak times,” says a statement.
Passengers should currently plan more time than usual before departure: “At least a good two to two and a half hours.” A few weeks ago, the number of passengers had increased significantly, they are currently around 30,000 passengers a day: “We assume that this level will be similar or moderately increase in the summer months.”
The security check in Terminal 2, which was closed during the pandemic, is apparently not to be reopened. The central control in Terminal 1 has sufficient capacity, according to the airport. Verdi sees it differently and speaks of a “bottleneck situation”.
Passenger volume “recovered much faster”
According to a Securitas spokesman, the level of sick leave at Cologne/Bonn Airport is currently “slightly higher than the national average”, but the fluctuation among employees is not particularly high. The additional requirement put by Verdi at 100 employees is not correct.
It is true that approximately this personnel requirement was expected for the whole of 2022, including fluctuation compensation. However, the current additional demand is lower. And as early as 2021, more staff had started to be recruited. However, since the second quarter of 2022, the number of passengers has been recovering “much faster than commonly forecast”.