I think what you all see here is passion.
Ground crews of all handling companies are highly committed to what they do. For many it is a life of over 5 years.
For many more, over 15. Middle management in the airlines and handlers have to toe the line between motivation, honesty and meeting the numbers.
For example, whatever the feel good factor involved in a succesful turn, it is just one TINY factor in that single hour of operation that will involve
the financing of the aircraft, crewing, fuel costs, maintenance, navigation fees, de-icing at this time of year, load factor, customer satisfaction,
catering (or not), and after it all? PROFIT and PUNCTUALITY are about all that is measured.
Aircraft simply don't launch into the sky empty or loud to make us feel good any more.....even military ones have felt the pinch.
Will NEVER happen I pray, but the Red Arrows have to justify flying around for what some consider to be 'nothing' these days.
My suggestion to all is rather than in-fighting amongst the handling uniforms, just think about what the real situation is.
Many airlines are not making much money. Their pilots, engineers and cabin crew ALL want more money too. The few airlines that do make money
are financing considerable fleet expansion so they prefer to give any 'spare' cash back to the shareholders that made it all happen for them.
Understandable?
Ground handling companies are under pressure. Many of them. The result is equipment is run until it can't make it another day,
staff are paid the least amount possible.
Handling companies fight one another for scraps of business.
Quality suffers. Then that makes it even easier to suggest a further reduction in handling charges.
For cargo, the integrators handle themselves wherever possible. It is very very expensive, but gurantees a quality that is hard to match.
Brand new equipment can sit redundant for 20hrs a day.
So for the handlers? The IATA SGHA that was set up to simplify things has actually been part of the problem. It defines exactly what you get.
The airlines know this, so how can Servisair be different from Aviance?
In reality, the people might make the difference, but the world is run by accountants these days.
They shouldn't be blamed that they have never worked on the ramp..but they DON'T see the turn that was only made by the ramp team
that pulled a rabbit out of the hat (metaphorically speaking).
2 SGHA's...2 rates...and one is picked. The cheapest.
If they screw it up it's a 60 day termination and it is given to the next handler, till they screw up....then it is given it to a new one (or the original).
Invariably at a cheaper rate because the handler still thinks they are fighting to get the business.
Sometimes to cling on to the business, the existing handler drops the rate rather than lose the business.
Airline strategy is planned many years in advance:
Pilot recruitment (1-20yrs)
Fleet replacement (3-25 yrs)
Aircraft orders. Finance and leasing (1-30yrs)
Network and routes (3 months-10yrs)
For some even fuel hedging predicting a saving is worth the bet!
But the handling companies work on standard IATA SGHA 60 days.
Stop infighting. This isn't about unions or different uniforms.
It is about a foodchain. Skint or hungry eagles roam the sky.
Poor and tired mice live on the ground.
It will all change when the mice become scarce, but until then?