canceled flights, scenes of chaos… behind the scenes of the great summer mayhem

Have the actors of air transport had their eyes bigger than their stomachs? This summer, they had a hard time digesting the resumption of their activity. The mass return of travelers eager for vacation, after two years punctuated by the waves of Covid, gave rise to images of chaos in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Sydney or even Chicago: hours of waiting before checks, thousands of bags piled up in airport halls, tens of thousands of flights canceled since June…

Several airports have taken a drastic step to avoid being overwhelmed: limit the number of travelers for several months allowed to fly every day. Enough to force companies to revise their flight schedules downwards and cancel thousands of slots. Thus Heathrow airport, the largest in Europe, will not welcome more than 100,000 passengers per day until September, against 110,000 to 125,000 in July and August 2019. His boss asked the…