DENVER, CO – In a closed-door session earlier this week, executives from each of the major airlines met to discuss the shocking turn of events unfolding before their eyes this summer. The topic: how did we get it so wrong?
While standing in an airport security line that stretched seemingly for hours, Lucinda Jackson was fuming. The lightly staffed security checkpoint was woefully unprepared for the deluge of travelers it was attempting to process, having fired most of its staff during the initial months of the pandemic. Now, as travel demand skyrockets the airport, like many across the world, can’t seem to find people to work fast enough.
And, it’s not just airports. Nearly all aspects of the travel industry from housekeepers to uber drivers, pilots to the ground crew, and everything in between remains deeply understaffed and ill-prepared for the 2022 summer travel surge.
In a closed-door meeting in Denver this week, executives from several major airlines met to discuss how they could have gotten it all wrong. Why do we people still want to travel? In a now-leaked agenda, topics like the following were covered by the group of flummoxed leaders:
- Where did all these people come from?
- I thought we killed their desire to travel by pestering them about face masks for 2 years?
- How come the 7 total pilots we have left weren’t enough?
- Why do people still like to travel?
- Why are we such F$*$#*# morons?
- Wait, we actually laid all those people off?
- How can we blame the unions?
- I thought business travel was dead?
- Hey, who has the phone number of that hot flight attendant we fired early on in the pandemic? You think she’d still want to work?
- Why are we paying flight attendants during the boarding process, again?
- Who let Spirit Airlines in here?
Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian, who emceed the event, was reported to have pounded his fist on the table in a Marriott Hotel Conference room near the Denver Airport, when only two other CEOs arrived on time, while the others had their flights canceled because of pilot shortages.
Bastian was later seen chastising a Marriot Front Desk clerk who had also just finished cleaning the bottom floor because they couldn’t find any maids who wanted to come back to work after being unceremoniously fired.
No decisions were reached according to an executive assistant traveling with one CEO, and no one remembered to take notes anyway. The airline CEOs left on their own accord, forced to walk back to the airport terminal because there were no shuttle drivers left working.
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