The SkyTanking company, which does the ground handling for Ryanair on Eindhoven Airport, acknowledges that it has made mistakes with the personnel grilles in the last few weeks, so that flights were delayed and luggage was delayed. Operational director of the company, Sascha von Wolfersdorf, tells Omroep Brabant on Tuesday that the problems arose, among other things because managers have given too many people free in high season.
In the conversation, the director also indicates that the company has started an internal investigation into the corporate culture. This after reports from employees about an anxiety culture and an unsafe working atmosphere. Von Wolfersdorf says it wants to improve the working conditions for employees. “And nobody has to fear for his or her job,” he assures.
In the office, where you look out over the platform where Ryanair’s flights are prepared for departure, the operational director tells about the problems that Skytanking had to deal with in recent weeks. “We had two very bad days due to the staff shortage,” he acknowledges. Due to the shortage, it was a chaos at the airport two weeks ago: travelers had to wait hours for their luggage and a number of flights from Ryanair had a delay.
Skytanking does this at Eindhoven Airport
Skytanking provides the entire ground handling process for travelers of Ryanair flights at Eindhoven Airport. When checking in the luggage up to the Vliegergeur door, people from Skytanking are standing to help passengers.
Behind the scenes, the company ensures that the luggage is loaded and unloaded and that the luggage ends up at the right destination, so that people can take it off the band there again.
“Managers have given too many employees a holiday in this busy period. As a result, there was more pressure on other employees. In recent weeks, a lot of employees have also dropped out of sickness due to the workload,” the director explains part of the problems. “That is why in the future we will look better at the leave requests in the high season,” he promises.
The company currently misses around 30 percent of the total number of employees. That causes problems in high season. Von Wolfersdorf had a solid last Friday, but according to him good conversation, with director Roel Hellemons of Eindhoven Airport. The airport called the company on the mat and expected a concrete action plan.
“The schedules were previously not tailored to the number of flights in one day. As a result, we were over -occupied one day and the other day, we adjusted that,” says the director of Skytanking. In addition, the company is hiring new employees. They must be trained in the right way and according to him, the company calls on extra trainers from abroad.
Trade union FNV sent another letter to Eindhoven Airport last week, in which they demand that the number of Ryanair flights will be reduced because the situation would be untenable. No solution, Von Wolfersdorf believes. He thinks that the measure yields more disadvantage for travelers – in the form of canceled flights – than the benefit for employees. “A lot of employees will also come back from vacation in the coming weeks, which means that the workload will decrease,” he promises.
“Aircraft are sometimes earlier or later at the airport. That increases the pressure.”
Nevertheless, according to the director, problems have also arisen in recent weeks due to situations on which the company had no influence: “Aircraft are sometimes earlier or later at the airport. That increases the pressure, which means that sometimes there is no time for a break or which means that employees have to work longer. We can’t do anything about it, but it does cause headache.”
The high workload also causes unrest within the company. Employees tell Omroep Brabant that they do not feel heard by managers. A former employee recently even said that managers threaten and scold employees. Also in a report from the FNV trade union from the beginning of July, employees say that there is a fear culture within the company and that they are squeezed by managers.
Von Wolfersdorf indicates that he will approach the FNV about the report. The director also wants to contact all employees personally to investigate these reports: “I like that employees express their concerns and I want to actively see how we can work on it.” He then also states the anonymous reporting systems that the company has, where employees can report misconduct. “I want people to tell us the truth. Nobody has to fear his or her job,” the director assures.
“If we don’t know, we can’t help it either.”
Omroep Brabant discovered last week that sky tanking was tampered with filling in delay codes. These codes are entered in a system to pass on the reason for a delay. Discussions with employees and messages that Omroep Brabant has viewed shows that managers asked employees for a different reason to give a delay than the staff shortage. With this, the company could hide the staff shortage for their customer Ryanair.
After the unveiling of Omroep Brabant, Von Wolfersdorf contacted employees of Skytanking at Eindhoven Airport: “I said they should not cheat with the delay codes, because they throw in their own windows. If the management of our company and Ryanair does not know about the staff shortage, we can’t do anything about it.”
According to him, SkyTanking also does not get a financial benefit from cheating with the Verdaginsg Codes. According to him, the contract that Skytanking has with Ryanair has no consequences when flights are delayed as a result of a staff shortage at Skytanking.
The operational director of Skytanking promised Eindhoven Airport in the conversation last Friday improvement and says he wants to solve the problems. After the summer, Skytanking, Eindhoven Airport and trade union FNV Aviation again have a conversation to see if the situation has improved.