Transwede,
A little bit of history about the TOM contract. Are you sitting comfortably? then we'll begin....
Back in the mid 90's (think '93) Britannia, as it was then, had a bright young Purchasing Manager by the name of N Daniels (you may know of him if you have worked for Groundstar/Swissport).
He decreed that, unlike the previous number of years, BY would not place all their UK ground handling with one supplier. He wanted a method of measuring/benchmarking the service delivery standards; or he wanted a stick to beat Servisair with in terms of price comparison.
At that time Servisair had all BY's business in the UK except LTN; which was still BY self handling - later to be taken over by Servisair.
Servisair management had to decide where offer to give up a contract.
The company looked at medium sized operations - they did not to give up MAN or LGW and BY did not think some of the smaller operations MME/ABZ etc would offer a realistic comparison. It came down to 3 airport - NCL/GLA and I think EMA.
At that time NCL offered Servisair the best option as Northeast Aviation, as was the trading name of the current Swissport UK then, were a 'one airport' company and, as such, were less of a threat that the competition to Servisiar at both other airports. Back in those days Servisair at NCL had the majority of the work; NE had BA and Braathens and Dan Air did themselves and a couple of small charter operations (one Canadian - Odyssey? -and I think Monarch).
So the decision was made by Servisair to offer NCL as the way out; very much to the frustration of the Servisair NCL staff who had been in the BY 'Top 3' UK stations for the previous 5 years. Servisair had been BY's handling agent at NCL since buying out a local agent called Woolsington Handling around '68/69 who had held the contract since the Wright Brothers.....
Business is business and Servisair made a decision based on what was best for the company as whole and not what was best for NCL alone.
Bearing in mind how much smaller the contract is today (in terms of the overall handling to both companies) it does not have the same significance as it did then. I recall BY having 5 B737's based at NCL at one time; another it was 2 x B757 + 1.5 B767 + , I think 1 or 2 B737's.
Well, you did ask....
GH