my view
I have only worked on the GHA side of the fence but now work closely with airlines. I believe the following issues contribute to the problem
Both the GHA and to a lesser extent the airline have commercial departments, usually these people have little current front line experience. Once the contract is agreed it is passed over to the operational people to implement and little is seen of the commercial people until its time for the renewal. What was agreed and understood by the commercial people can and is misinterpreted by the operational people. The commercial people do not always understand the day to day operational requirements and the case of the turnaround clean raised by 42psi is a classic example of this.
The requirements of the contract are usually confidential when in reality it’s only the price that should be confidential. I can remember my former employer resigning contract with a large based carrier. It was agreed that the duty teams from the GHA and the airline would meet to review the operational aspects. The problem however was neither the GHA nor the airline believed that the operational people should be allowed to see the contract. The result was the GHA staff did not know what they should be providing and the airline staff did not know what they should be receiving. It would help if the Annex A agreements and operational SLA data was available to the front line staff.
The SGHA is an issue, it is reissued every five years and a working group meets twice a year to discuss what changes should be made, again the participants are usually commercial people. The next meeting is later this month where the first draft of the 2013 contract will be discussed. In an industry moving this fast the annex A can fall behind. A prime example of this would be e-ticketing where check in and ticketing functions are overlapping, nowhere in section 2.2 of the annex A is e-ticketing mentioned yet this is the 2008 version and paper tickets have all but disappeared.
I was involved in the discussion for 3.6.4 (2) provide / arrange for delivery and pick up of mobility devices at aircraft doors or other agreed points to be specified in annex B. originally this was going to say provide / arrange for deliver and pick up of mobility devices at aircraft side. I argued that aircraft side was too loose and that the ramp would interpret this as the bottom of the baggage belt whilst the PRM supplier would believe it was the top of the aircraft stairs. The list was then expanded to about 8 locations before we eventually settled on "other agreed points to be specified in annex B". the likelihood of the airline or the GHA commercial manager knowing each airports operating procedures to the degree that anything is placed in the annex B is remote in my opinion.
The industry has changed dramatically over the last few years with the advent of low cost carriers they require much less and assume higher volumes and quicker turn rounds equals a lower handling price. This is not always the case for the GHA, in the case of a large based carrier the GHA will have a large staff which will require a back office to manage rosters and worl allocation additionally more supervisors and team leaders will be required all of which increase the charges. The airline’s economics dictate the aircraft must all leave at the crack of sparrows so there is a peak of ramp activity between 0530 and 0730 and then again between 1130 and 1330, the afternoon peak between 1730-1930 before all the aircraft return finally between 2230 and 0030. This will gives the GHA about 4 productive hours on an 8 hour shift. But means that any work between these times is essentially 100% profit hence the low prices offered to win suplimentary business.
All that said it would appear that the GHA’s are now beginning to dictate the pace a little more and the handling prices will start to rise. I would hazard a guess that none of the Aviance Gatwick customers are paying less for the handling with the new company than they were with Aviance.