Travelers who have to wait for hours for their suitcase and employees who fall sick in droves. This summer it was doom and gloom at Skytanking, the company that handles Ryanair’s ground handling at Eindhoven Airport. Those problems seem to be coming to an end. The company will be taken over by competitor Viggo on Wednesday.
Trade union FNV Aviation hopes that this will put an end to budget airlines exploiting airline employees. “This takeover shows that working below cost price does not pay,” says FNV director Stijn Jansen.
Viggo will take over most of Skytanking’s approximately 100 employees. The employment of 10 to 15 managers will end due to the takeover. They are said goodbye via a social plan.
Trade union FNV expects employees to be better off in the long term. “The employment conditions at Viggo are better. There is a pension scheme and a works council,” says Jansen.
‘Tickets a few euros more expensive’
The union hopes that the disappearance of Skytanking will also put an end to the number of problems we saw that summer. “The quality at Viggo is higher than at Skytanking. That makes them more expensive. The tickets at Ryanair may become a few euros more expensive,” Jansen thinks.
When Skytanking started taking care of the passenger process for Ryanair flights last April, Viggo’s monopoly on the airport came to an end after fifty years.
‘Race down’
But with the arrival of the German Skytanking, FNV Aviation also warned of ‘a race to the bottom’. If airlines want to offer cheap tickets, those costs have to be recouped somewhere. “You can only make the most profit on staff costs,” Jansen previously explained to Omroep Brabant.
To save costs, Ryanair would pay Skytanking below cost, resulting in a summer full of problems for the handler. “Ryanair is really a company that is a leader in exploiting people,” the FNV director said at the time.
In a message sent to Viggo employees on Tuesday and seen by Omroep Brabant, the company states that the takeover will put an end to fierce competition at the airport. “With only three major airlines Ryanair, Wizz Air and Transavia and two handlers, fares came under increasing pressure, which is unsustainable in the longer term,” the company writes.
What happened this summer?
Due to structural understaffing at Skytanking, dozens of flights were delayed this summer and travelers sometimes had to wait for hours in a stationary plane or at the baggage claim at Eindhoven Airport.
According to operational director Sascha von Wolfersdorf, the staff shortage was caused by managers who had given too many employees time off during the summer period. The other employees therefore had to work hard, sometimes had no breaks and often worked overtime for hours. Many staff therefore fell ill with burn-out complaints or physical complaints, which resulted in even fewer staff.
In addition, a report from the FNV trade union in July showed that there is a culture of fear at the company. Employees would be verbally abused and not feel heard by managers. If they called in sick, they were threatened with dismissal. Due to the high workload and the culture of fear, safety is regularly compromised, according to employees that Omroep Brabant spoke to. For example, speed is often said to take precedence over safety. Employees have seen, among other things, that stairs were not properly connected to aircraft and aircraft doors were not closed properly.
Skytanking promised improvement. Since October, there has been compensation for missed pension payments, the schedules have been improved, more people have been deployed for processing and a works council is expected to be established.
These measures have also increased costs. FNV suspects that the high costs that the company has been incurring since the summer, in combination with the lack of a contract with a second airline, makes Skytanking’s financial situation untenable and that a takeover by Viggo is inevitable.
At least two contracts
Jansen is not shocked by that. “A good operation is only possible if a handler has at least two contracts with the major airlines at the airport,” he explains.
Skytanking started ground handling for Ryanair with the aim of concluding a contract with a second airline. “That did not work out, so they will probably no longer be able to make ends meet. The company incurs very high costs and Ryanair pays very little,” Jansen explains.
Future Ryanair
With the acquisition of the company, Viggo also takes over the contract between Skytanking and Ryanair. It is not clear until when that handling contract will run. If Viggo retains the monopoly at the airport, it will renegotiate the cost of ground handling with Ryanair at the end of the current contract.
The question remains whether Ryanair wants to pay Viggo’s higher rate or whether the airline will depart from Eindhoven Airport. “We have seen in the past that Ryanair leaves when it becomes more expensive,” says the FNV director. For example, the Irish budget airline announced its departure from Maastricht Aachen Airport earlier this year, because airport costs were increasing.