Just caught up with this and pleased to see that for a pprune thread it's still astoundingly on topic
I would clarify that I don't actually hold the view that things are improving within the GHA world
As has been mentioned .. those negotiating the contracts are often so removed from operational knowledge that they are making choices/decisions which may well be impossible to achieve ... the frightening thing and the biggest problem with this is thay they are doing this in complete ignorance and with the conviction that they are actually putting together a good deal for both parties.
Some of the best contracts I've seen have been negotiated by ex airline people who've moved over into the GHA business.
This is not because of any failure by those who've experienced only GHA but because they were able to easily spot and correct the "holes" that would allow service anomolies to fall through.
Why don't I think things are actually improving???
Well there are many recent newish entrants to the GHA business ..... I'm not convinced they are winning contracts on service/reliability rather than cost .... they don't have a long enough history to be able to prove to an airline that they can deliver ... that represents an element of risk to an airline.
That risk can be acceptable if the cost is low enough to make it worthwhile.
That means contracts are being won/lost based on cost.... back where it all started!!
It seems to me that many of the airlines have also lost the ability to be able to size up if the resources being quoted by a handling agent are actually realistically going to allow it to deliver on it's promises.
I saw a phrase in annother section which I think is entirely appropriate to this .... it mentioned the risks of losing "corporate memory".
I feel that's the bit these days that is indeed being lost. It's the knowledge that says why things area actually done in a particular way and the experience to be able to adapt without compromising either safety or performance to meet new challenges.
I've recently seen a low cost carrier (not FR who always seem to get bashed!) set a requirement for it's GHA to specifically position equipment prior to arrival in a way that infringes the required safe segregation from a/c and then also stipulate that two sets of steps plus chocks (nose/main) plus mobile GPU are all in use within a two minute timescale.
Now that's OK if the contract pays to have enough manpower on hand to achieve those objectives ... as the GHA normally meets with two staff that would suggest it might not
..... it might also indicate some severe manpower problems!!
I suspect reality is a mixture of the two.
With the economic downturn about to hit home I'm not sure it's a good time for GHA's try and turn things around .. most are likely to be fighting hard to keep afloat.
We are now at summers' end (did it even start) and the next few months will be critical for those with tight margins.
Off for annother snooze now!
