DAILY flight cancellations, including a significant number of British Airways flights, are impacting on essential work in the oil, gas, renewables and marine sectors. Murray Burnett, managing director of Munro’s Travel, an independent travel management company based in Aberdeen which arranges global travel for essential workers says that the impact reaches beyond the inconvenience for individual travellers.
“The impact of the multiple flight cancellations has been felt across our entire business and has caused huge disruption and additional costs to our clients. But the real impact for the energy and marine sectors is in interruptions to crew rotations and any down time which is caused by the unexpected last-minute cancellations of flights. On Wednesday alone (13.4.22) British Airways cancelled flights from Heathrow to destinations including Frankfurt, Paris, Oslo, Hamburg, Glasgow and Aberdeen.”
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Why? Free to subscribe, no paywall, daily business news digest.
“Hundreds more flights have been cancelled in recent days and it is expected that the disruption will continue. This is seriously interrupting scheduled offshore crew rotations plus the cancellations have delayed crew members returning from family holidays which has resulted in some crew missing their planned rotation offshore.”
The flight cancellations and delays in airports are predicted, by some, to continue for months as the travel sector faces the perfect storm of covid absences and recruitment issues. And, according to Murray, the ongoing costs are not the only concern for these sectors.
“Energy and marine businesses rely on international crews all arriving at one place at the same time ready to relieve their colleagues, which is at the best of times a logistical plate-spinning exercise.
“When there are significant numbers of last-minute cancellations and potentially long airport delays, it’s very difficult for a business to keep track of where all its employees are located at any given time. They also need a way to send complex, reworked itineraries to groups of travellers all heading to the same destination but from all four corners of the world. This is a serious consideration for the firm’s duty of care to employees.
“A traveller tracking service is crucial technology for firms who have multiple essential workers moving across the globe. Using this tool, if a traveller’s itinerary has been disrupted, for whatever reason, we are able to provide information about alternative routes and different means of travel and advise the employee 24/7. With some industry commentators stating that it may take up to 12 months for the industry vacancy situation to settle down, it makes sense for organisations to be using all of the technology, and peace of mind, which a travel management company provides.”
Munro’s is a travel management company offering complete travel management for the global energy industry. Established in 1903, Munro’s is leading independent travel management company in the UK and has a client base of over 300 energy sector organisations. More about Munro’s can be found at www.munrostravel.com.
