BERLIN – Germany’s biggest airport operator Fraport said on Twitter on Wednesday it had to cancel flights as it was struggling to hire enough people after massive job cuts due to the COVID-19 crisis, especially in the field of ground handling.
A spokesman for the group, which runs aviation facilities in nine countries worldwide and the main airport in Germany’s Frankfurt, said the cancellations would be decided by the airlines and were expected as of Friday, April 8.
The company did not specify the number of flights that would be cancelled.
In late March, Fraport warned about likely delays around Easter due to staff shortages in departments crucial for processing flights, though it aims to hire 1,000 employees in 2022 and took on about 300 people between January and March.
Fraport is not the only European company facing a staffing problem. Britain-based low-cost carrier easyJet and British Airways as well as Ireland’s Ryanair have also reported issues.
(Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Miranda Murray)
