Aer Lingus and Ryanair confident they can handle pent-up travel demand 

Aer Lingus and Ryanair both say they can handle the demand for the return to international travel. Picture: Mark Stedman

Irish airlines say they are confident they can handle the swathes of passengers and flights when the EU digital travel certificate is introduced on Monday, as their US counterparts struggle to cope with pent-up demand.

Aer Lingus and Ryanair told the Irish Examiner that they had been preparing for international travel to restart in earnest for months, and had taken measures to make sure it was as seamless as possible.

It comes as thousands of passengers across the US face long delays at the airport, cancelled flights, and volatility among their fellow travelers as airlines attempt to get back on regular schedules.

Data from global aviation software firm FlightAware shows just how acute the problem has become for airlines such as American, JetBlue, and Southwest.

According to FlightAware, there were just under 3,000 flight delays across the world on Thursday of this week, while in the first week of this month, more than half of JetBlue flights were delayed, as well as a third of American Airlines flights, and nearly 40% from Southwest.

Flights cancelled

This, in turn, has led to the US airlines cancelling a range of future flights as they attempt to grasp the scale of the delay problem. 

Extreme weather has been a major cause of the delays, but the lack of up-to-speed trained pilots and a shortage among their numbers have also been root causes.

As travel across the US became looser in May, pilots self-reported to NASA's aviation reporting system that they found themselves making errors upon retaking to the skies, such as forgetting to turn on de-icing systems, descending to incorrect altitudes, taxiing into oncoming traffic on the runway, and even overshooting the runway upon landing.

Dennis Tajer of the Allied Pilots Association told US news organisation The Hill that "the pilots are there, but their hands are tied because they aren’t fully trained and they can’t fly yet".

The EU Digital Covid Certificate Regulation was introduced this month, and EU citizens and residents are seeing certs issued and verified across the bloc ahead of non-essential travel being normalised, despite a surge in the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus.

Digital vaccine certs

Ireland aims to issue 1.9m digital vaccine certs by July 19, the Oireachtas Transport Committee was told this week.

Aer Lingus said it was confident ahead of any expected surge of travellers that its pilot training and crews were up to speed.

"International aviation regulation requires all air crew to complete annual recurrent training to retain their licence to operate aircraft. We manage our crew training in compliance with all regulatory requirements and aligned to our flying programme."

Ryanair said it made a decision at the outset of the Covid pandemic that its pilots would remain “current and in check” even during reduced operations. 

"This has allowed the Ryanair Group to ramp up its activity in response to customer demand. 

"All pilots undertook a continuous programme of theoretical, simulator and flight training to maintain standards and safety across our network.

Safety remains Ryanair’s main priority and we are proud of our industry leading operational and training standards," it said.

The EU digital cert provides proof that a person has either been fully vaccinated, received a negative test result or has recovered from Covid-19 in the past six months.