Travel chaos in Europe is a glimpse of a future with few spare workers

Where did all the workers go? The question feels ubiquitous in Europe. From French cafés to Irish construction crews, Czech car factories and Italian farms, employers once assumed cheap staff could be summoned at will. Now the toilers seem to have simply vanished. Companies are grumbling, though rarely as loudly as Parisians waiting for an oblivious garçon to arrive with their drinks. In no sector is the lack of staff so glaring as in air travel. For weeks tourists at some of Europe’s biggest airports have faced serpentine queues to catch their flights, assuming those flights have not been cancelled due to the shortage of hands. Going on a relaxing holiday has never seemed so stressful. In this economy, everybody in Europe can find work; as a result, Europe isn’t working.

After two years of pandemic uncertainty, tourism is back (minus a few Asian visitors). For Europe, which attracts half the world’s international travellers, that ought to be a boon. And yet the headlines are grim. Staff shortages at airports and airlines have prompted a surge in flight cancellations. In June, just as resorts and city centres ought to have been filling up, carriers in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain cancelled nearly 8,000 flights, roughly three times the figure in 2019, according to Cirium, a consultancy. Each scrapped journey gives rise to a planeload of sob stories: Alicante stag parties postponed, Tuscan family getaways forsaken. American air travel has problems too, but nothing like the bedlam that has engulfed parts of Europe.