Up, up in the air…

I’ve never had a single problem when flying to and from Bristol Airport. I don’t use it that often, once, maybe twice in a good year, but my experience has always been satisfactory and good. But, as I am again poised to use Adge Cutler International, as it should be called, I am beginning to wonder whether there is, as they say, a first time for everything.

Recent reports suggest that the airport is creaking more than a little. Today, there were horrendously long queues at check-in from as early as 4.00am. Bristol Airport blames staff shortages which leads one to wonder whether they were actually expecting the summer season flights to begin at all. You would think, wouldn’t you, that with 300,000 passengers using the airport this week, the airport authorities might have made plans to process them all. If they did do that, they didn’t do it very well. But there’s more to Bristol Airport than meets the eye.

For one thing, it’s not owned by the people of Bristol, or even the people of the UK. It is owned by, and I am not making this up, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) and I know this for sure because a much-loved family member lives in Ontario and benefits from it. Understandably, OTPP exists to make money from its investments in order to pay its pensioners. And to that end, like large numbers of airports across the world they contract out vast swarths of their business to other companies, in Bristol’s case to Swissport.

At Bristol, Swissport handles everything from baggage handling, security services, lounges and the airport boarding ‘gates’ so while the OTPP owners are theoretically in control, they’ve handed responsibility to Swissport who don’t seem to be doing a very good job. Why not?

Swissport had. to be bailed out during the Covid crisis and one consequence was they got rid of 50% of the staff in Britain and Ireland. One would imagine Bristol took its fair – or unfair? – share of this hit and now passenger numbers are booming again, who is to say these check-in queues, long waits at baggage reclaim, the sudden closure or restricted use of so-called executive lounges as at Bristol, isn’t as a direct result of cutting staff? Not Bristol Airport. They admit they are now trying to recruit new staff, meaning presumably Swissport are seeking to replace the staff that axed two years ago. Talk about not being able to run a whelk stall.

In the end, it all comes down to money. In a country where cash is king and everything else, like value for money and decent customer service barely matters at all, this is what end up with. And in such a system of free enterprise, the business will squeeze you for every penny not least because they know you’d always prefer to fly from your local airport.

So the problems at Bristol Airport are the fault of OTPP because even though they don’t directly manage operations, they’re the ones who decide who does. And if Swissport aren’t good enough, there’s always ServiceAir. Oh no, Swissport swallowed them up years ago. After all, the best thing for competition is when there isn’t any. Except for customers, of course.