THE UK's post-Brexit immigration regime is partly to blame for the current labour shortages that are behind the recent travel chaos at Britain's airports, the chief executive of Wizz Air said yesterday.

"The UK's post-Brexit immigration policy is putting a lot of strain on the labour market, something that is unique to Britain across the industry," Wizz Air's chief executive Jozsef Varadi told analysts this morning.

"You have exemptions for agricultural workers, maybe there should be exemptions for aviation," Varadi said.

While the boss argued labour shortages are not a problem for Wizz Air, he said they are an issue for the UK's airports and ground handling services.

"We have been much engaged with recruiting staff, especially vital cabin crew, to make sure our organisational capacity gets aligned to the actual capacity we are deploying in the market place," Varadi said.

The airline was forced to axe a significant number of flights from Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) from Friday after the airport said it could no longer guarantee a smooth run of operations.

Wizz accused the hub of not guaranteeing "the terms of its commercial agreement," while DSA argued that the company had recognised its own labour shortages were behind the decision to suspend operations.

"Wizz Air is fully stocked on pilots as well as cabin crew for normal operating circumstances. The issue we are dealing with right now are the abnormalities of the operating environment, which require a totally different level of staff and a totally different level of management disruption," Varadi added.

Varadi's comments came after the airline posted bigger losses compared with the previous year as it continues to battle record fuel prices and travel disruption.

The low-cost carrier reported a 2022 full year loss of €643m (£550.3m), an 11.5 per cent rise on the €576m hit it took last year. The airline said it was also expecting a loss for the first quarter of 2023.

Despite the losses, Wizz Air reported a 166.3 per cent boost in passengers carried in 2022, with 27.1m customers hopping aboard its planes over the 12 months period compared to just 10.2m the year before.

(c) 2022 City A.M., source Newspaper