A Vueling Airlines flight bound for Florence left Gatwick Airport without passengers. Due to a lack of staff, passengers were unable to reach the boarding gate in time.
The crew of Vueling flight VY6209 sat in full force on the plane for more than two hours waiting for the scheduled evening departure before the commander decided to fly empty to be in time for Florence before the introduction of restrictions on civil aviation flights at night. Remember, the flight was in the evening.
A total of 144 economy class passengers were scheduled to fly on the Airbus A319 that evening. The Spanish carrier was immediately accused of flying away, leaving people with tickets in their hands due to a lack of airport staff.
The scheduled departure time was on Monday at 20:20. The crew’s patience was enough for 2 hours – the plane nevertheless took off at 22:30 and landed in Italy at one in the morning.
Passengers were forced to queue for four hours just to check-in at the Vueling counter. When they did get to their gate, the airline spokesman made an announcement: there wasn’t enough staff to put everyone on the flight fast enough, so the pilots decided to leave without them.
Like several airports across Europe, Gatwick is suffering from a catastrophic shortage of staff following massive layoffs during the coronavirus shutdown.
Some European airports, such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol and Dublin, are also reporting problems recruiting security personnel to keep up with demand. The outage is expected to last until the end of the summer.