“These are scenes like in a developing country,” said an eXXpress reader when asked about the flight chaos of AUA. And yes, the scenes of children who have to sleep in storage rooms because an airline doesn’t manage to provide a corresponding service for customers (!) who have paid for their tickets are disconcerting. Now even the federal army is supposed to move in to deal with the flight chaos.
Why can there be such a crisis at the beginning of the holidays? The AUA management talks its way out, speaks of “technical reasons” and Corona-related failures and also passes the buck to the main actors in the Ukraine war.
But things are not that simple. Because: It has been known for months that the holiday season is about to start and yet AUA only had to cancel 100 flights at the weekend – and only 19 more on Monday. Further flight cancellations are also expected for today’s Tuesday!
In the Corona pandemic, the company also pushed 50 experienced employees out of the company with a “golden handshake”, only to now, in a belated panic reaction, add 200 employees. Not to mention that the company received a corona bonus of 400 million euros.
The failure of the AUA management is obvious, but more and more stranded AUA passengers are asking: “When will the government finally act?” Because: AUA was once considered an internationally recognized airline. But the pictures of flight attendants who turn customers away despite paid tickets (!) – and ask them to leave the airport, also damage the reputation of the republic. Many posters in the eXXpress readers’ forum see it similarly, where the waves rise in view of the AUA chaos (pictures).
The question arises: Where is the responsible minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens), who was celebrated for saving the AUA in the corona pandemic? After all, the AUA chaos is endangering thousands of well-deserved vacations by Austrians. But similar to the gas crisis in our country – the eXXpress reported – the minister seems to have no answers to the chaos.
Now it is high time that the Austrian federal government ordered the AUA management to report: In order to finally provide relief for the suffering passengers who are now stranded in the “storage room” instead of on southern beaches.
