ServisAir: on the ramp-age
The management see 'rampies' as children, and when you see rampies abusing (largely neglected) equipment you see they may have a point. But, you have to lead by example, and if you won't leave your burrow how will the children learn?
The people pulling the strings of the puppeteers have a plan; bring in 'cover' to watch the redundant. Pay them time and a half and put them up at a cost of £125 (and broadcast the fact) which is equivalent to a weeks wages for those losing their jobs - and those being denied O/T because they have 'cover'.
The idea is to stop people playing silly buggers, because the potential costs are huge, and yet the wages (whether working towards redundancy or not) are tiny. What kind of people do these tiny wages attract?
Front of house you have people whose previous customer facing skills were honed, for example, in a chip shop. So in a tiny claustrauphobic airport which is woefully mismanaged you have one-on-ones that just don't add up.
But there's a bigger issue here, perhaps specific to ABZ? BAA benefit from hosting the airport, but do little to make things work. Every last penny is extracted from pasengers by peripheral activities like galleries and a proliferation of coffee shops - but one new coffee shop feels s-illy as it struggles for water to wash crockery (imagine!) because basic infrastructure like plumbing etc. comes a distant second to taking as much cash as possible from the passengers.
As readers may be aware ABZ is a special case as the MOD 'own' the airport (apparently) and this hampers expansion. Neither the MOD nor BAA want to foot the bill for an enlarged runway. And yet a direct service promised by CityStar to Houston receives a rapturous reception? When it comes to ticket prices it seems that money is no object, but look at the airport!
It seems like ABZ is still treating the Oil Business like a temporary bonanza, and a few decades in, as the oil threatens to 'runs out' temporary still seems to be the M.O.?
As things stand, on the Stands, after Dec 7th the airlines will have two choices. To use a smaller less experienced company which also seems to adopt the 'pay peanuts' HR philosophy (and there's an accident waiting to happen) or to coerce and convince an already stretched company to take on more work (and there's an accident waiting to happen)?
Given the situation you'd be right in thinking that things can only get better, but ABZ seems to be the exception to most sensible rules. Is this malaise true of aviation in general?