No A340 qualified people here at STN, we never get these a/c in normally
What rubbish, at least one handling agent is fully qualified to deal with
all aircraft types at any time of day or night, in fact they dealt with a number of A340's a few weeks ago when the fuellers went on strike at LHR.
The reason nobody will handle these "threat" aircraft is that the handling agents insurance company cannot and will not cover the costs involved if something did happen to any of it's staff.
Also under the health and safety at work act employers have a responsibilty for the safety and well being of their staff, I hardly thing asking blokes to go and offlaod bags with possible bombs in them is a reasonable request, and therefore the guys would be perfectly withing their rights to say "on yer bike" which is what happend last time when the Olympic arrived (hence the reason for the delay to the steps as discussed in another post) this was eventually offloaded by managers.
Since then it has been made perfectly clear by the powers that be that under no circumstances should handling agents get involved in anything to do with these situations until the police, army, SAS or whoever is in charge has declared it perfectly safe, and even then they still don't
have to deal with it.