Two Economic (and general travel) Thunks
Jun. 24th, 2022 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99Both sort of based on the 9 days travelling I did in the middle of the month.
1 - I had to fly through Frankfurt Airport, which has stopped pretending it's not a portal to hell. Anyway, because the fight was 20 minutes late arriving, we got stuck in security and passport so missed our connection.
In the ~ 1 1/2 hour queue to get a new flight, I ended up talking to the person doing crowd control on the queue. He said, and I have reason to believe him, that it was like this in Amsterdam too, and he expects it to stay that way for at least a year and a half. Apparently, it's really hard to get staff nowadays. I believe him because colleague's sister used to be an air stewardess and was laid off during COVID, and it wasn't the first time she'd been nearly laid off due to industry instability. She now has a nice job, with more reasonable hours, working conditions etc, and I suspect that's true of many people who worked in the airline industry as a whole. So they're not getting the experienced people back and are having to train up those few people willing to do it.
1a - Yeah, the minute I got back, I told the travel company we book through that you need more than 45 minutes to clear Frankfurt.
1b - Passport control crowd control mostly just mocked Brits trying to go through the EU channel. Apparently, Brexit really means Brexit. (He was actually completely charming and apologetic if you weren't obnoxious.) [This was also true of Iceland, so it's not just Germany].
2 - When I got back, my bread had increased by 12% in 9 days. Inflation is not that bad my foot. Now I grant I get fancy bread (actually remarkably cheap for its level of fanciness) and I earn enough that 16p extra a week is not going to break me, but there are people out there where it would.
1 - I had to fly through Frankfurt Airport, which has stopped pretending it's not a portal to hell. Anyway, because the fight was 20 minutes late arriving, we got stuck in security and passport so missed our connection.
In the ~ 1 1/2 hour queue to get a new flight, I ended up talking to the person doing crowd control on the queue. He said, and I have reason to believe him, that it was like this in Amsterdam too, and he expects it to stay that way for at least a year and a half. Apparently, it's really hard to get staff nowadays. I believe him because colleague's sister used to be an air stewardess and was laid off during COVID, and it wasn't the first time she'd been nearly laid off due to industry instability. She now has a nice job, with more reasonable hours, working conditions etc, and I suspect that's true of many people who worked in the airline industry as a whole. So they're not getting the experienced people back and are having to train up those few people willing to do it.
1a - Yeah, the minute I got back, I told the travel company we book through that you need more than 45 minutes to clear Frankfurt.
1b - Passport control crowd control mostly just mocked Brits trying to go through the EU channel. Apparently, Brexit really means Brexit. (He was actually completely charming and apologetic if you weren't obnoxious.) [This was also true of Iceland, so it's not just Germany].
2 - When I got back, my bread had increased by 12% in 9 days. Inflation is not that bad my foot. Now I grant I get fancy bread (actually remarkably cheap for its level of fanciness) and I earn enough that 16p extra a week is not going to break me, but there are people out there where it would.
