the merry go round
Hounddog1 ~ I should think that Servisair are trying to invoke TUPE (Google it). If they are successful that should put a hole in the Aviance maths but it should protect the staff jobs.
Mr Flaps ~ in my experience the commercial department of a handling agent has a very tenuous link to the operational management. There is a well known cycle on this that operates at most big airports
1) The commercial management sit in the ivory tower bidding on everything and getting the best price they can for the job (buying the business)
2) They win it and throw it over to the operational managers who have to try to make it work with the resources they can afford
3) If they manage to keep within the budget the service suffers and the airline moves
4) If they fail to keep within the budget then the handler starts to loose money
5) The final part of the cycle is the handler coming to its senses and starts jacking up the price. Unfortunately this is usually at the same time that another handler is starting the cycle.
A good example of this at Stansted recently is the move of THY to Swissport. The operation was struggling at the THY operating times before they won the contract. You have to wonder if the commercial team even spoke to the operational management before they put in the bid. THY use their own check in system so it requires its own team, I know there were occasions where the THY station management had to check in their own flight because there weren’t enough trained agents. Swissport are currently at number 3) on the cycle with a number of airlines so just wait for the merry go round to start again soon.