What Im saying is they do their best to get the aircraft turned round in the alloted time,I know the management signed to do the turn rounds in that time but they dont have to do them do they.How will more staff help? you can just get two inside the hold and two by the door to off load so more staff would be a hinderance so more staff would be no use. No wonder most of the experienced staff have left cause of this and no I dont work for Servisair just annoyed at the way Dumbdumbrain thinks Ryanair is the best thing in the world when its the hard work of the ground team to get the aircraft turned round in the 25 mins time but he just slags them off for their attitudes on the ramp

Abusing_the_sky

A CPT is NOT your village bus driver... He is GOD in that a/c for that day. Without him, the flight will never exist,pax would not be able to go from A to B.

at least you will not be called 'mate' or 'dude' now, just 'GOD'

come on opinions are two sided

Erm yes I think you will find I do push staff at the gate to find bag tag numbers asap, and make final calls by name. The captain can do very little in the flight deck other than write a inflight special report moaning (the captain can not even get off the a/c while pax are on board), and yes i've wrote reports before to my base manager. Like most of my fellow cabin crew we have a great deal respect towards our flight deck, we have a good working relationship and do a good job getting us back home often early.

And im sure my base manager and servisair have both sat down to try and sort issues out. But when Ryanair staff are not even allowed to pull boarding cards, it slows things down. paper work not being done on time, wrong figures given. Anyway it is the number one who gets a phone call asking why the a/c was late, not the captain, he just files the reason why.

And its not 25 mins, its actually only 20mins door to door, the othher mins are for taxiiing to stand and push back.

At the end of the day Ryanair is paying for a service which is not up to standard. . . . . which is a shame because servisair have some very good staff but is being let down by a few, lets hope these wont be stopping after the summer season. I actually get on with a fair number of them, and some were invited to the Ryanair staff summer party :ok:

Does anyone know what the tour ops are basing at EMA over the winter and next summer?


Oh and a few mins late is alot, that can lose you a slot, and you can wait for ages for another, a few weeks ago we missed one and had to wait almost 40mins for another, and that delay can creat delays for the rest of the day. And i never slagged off TNT, it was group 4, get ya facts right.
Lee

Abusing the sky

Next time I see a Ryanair captain or First Officer I will just call him 'GOD' in future. Thanks for the tip, I will tell the Servisair guys also to call him 'GOD'to and to get down and worship him to if thats what you want.

My opinions were aimed at Dumbdumbrain who seems to have his own say on everything at EMA so I was having my say about his beloved Ryanair

Davedog...

I wouldn't go to Buckingham Palace and say to the Queen : "You alright LOVE?"
Would you?:)

LOL First Bag
 

You do that, they'll appreciate it.:)

As I said, you'll find bad eggs in every basket, Servisair has some, so does Ryanair, or any other airline/ground handling company... But in all honesty if you like your job, on the ground, in the air, you wouldn't really take in whatever other people people put you through. That's just my opinion

Read you soon :ok:

Anyway it aint the baggage handlers (some of which are actually fit ;)) who are the problem its the boarding gate stafff,

I have to say THAT without the Captain and FO, yes the a/c won't be able to go anywhere, also if there were no dispatcher the a/c wouldn't be able to go anywhere Don't forget he/she signs paperwork that says evrything is safe on that a/c and loaded accordingly e.t.c. (and that is the law)

Therefor a dispatcher is also in charge of the safety of how many passengers are on board.

Fortunatly for us at CWL we have BmiBaby based crew that like the more friendly approach with using first name terms. (except for when they call down on company frequency)

Without check-in staff there wouldn't be any passengers for you to fly, and without baggage guys there won't be anyone to load the bags.

Even though the level of work and responsibility of each department amybe gerater than the other, without one of them, there wouldn't be able to operate.

Totally agree with the above

so very true:ok:

Thanks for that level headed post mathers_wales_uk, everybody is responsible for ensuring a safe and on-time departure, no matter what department they are from. The handling agents have a tough time in keeping good staff when you consider they have to keep their costs as low as possible to give demanding airlines like Ryanair the kind of contracts that they want.

Out of interest with Ryanair not being able to pull boarding cards, are cabin crew trained to do this? Not that it's rocket science or that bmibaby ever gave us training for it, but presumably in case you make a boarding error you need to know what to look out for and also it's Servisair's gate so they might want to try to board the flight with minimum interference.

The KISS brand from Menzies isn't actually used anymore, it was retired as it were two years ago when they got the Thomas Cook contract and decided to become a more rounded handling agent. Although Menzies handle Ryanair at a couple of Spanish stations and do handle other low-cost airlines in the UK, the Ryanair contract for something like 30 turns a day would be a massive overnight increase in what they handle and as mentioned there are severe penalties when flights are mishandled.

Yes all Ryanair cabin crew are fully trained to pull boarding cards. . . . i remember my trainer and Ryanair going over and over about passports and what to check for. . . . . . . I dont understand why we can;t we do every where else

finding_nema - are you sure you were not given training by bmibaby on how to pull a boarding card?

Check the date, flight number and name and photo id/passport - job done! :D

Boarding
 

I was told if I pull one I will have to pull them all. . . . which kind of defeats paying for the service, at every other airport we work together, I really don't see the difference at EMA unless anyone knows a reason why. In fact at DUB its only me and the dispatcher.

Lee

Nope, I had my training on most things after an incident had occured which demonstrated that I needed training in that area, but hey, we live and learn from our mistakes! Nothing about ground services is akin to rocket science, but it's about being told explicitly what to do and also appreciating human error, but again, that's the subject of a whole other email!

What exactly do Ryanair pay for at the gate? Could the crew not just stand on the crossing and let the (presumably) trained PSAs get on with their job in the gate?

East Midlands 6
 

Hi All
I am one of the "lucky" guys who off-loads and re-loads those 180 bags so i will give you all the lowdown on a Ryanair turnround. Four men allocated to the job,ONE MAN GETS A SET OF STEPS,ONE MAN G.P.U. ONE MAN CHOCKS&CONES AND ONE MAN LUGGAGE BARROWS. All equipment in place for a/c arrival then all put in correct positions and a/c offloadedwith 2 men inside a/c hold and 2 men outside. After bags offloaded one man goes to arrivals leaving three men for onload 2 men in hold and i man outside.Runs like clockwork nine times out of ten until there is a passenger offload which is WHAT CAUSES MOST OF THE DELAYS.Ican understand a passenger offload when repeated calls go unanswered with no sign of pax but MANY,MANY times pax are offloaded who are actually stood at the gate!!!!!!! At E.M.A. this is the difference between running the pax to the a/c in two minutes from the gate or offloading up to 180 bags which could take 20MINUTES if the bag has been loaded off the first cart. Never quite understood the logic of the delay equation 2 mins or 20 mins. I KNOW THERE HAS TO BE A GATE CLOSING TIME BUT TO HAVE IT SO FINE IS A PAIN IN THE ARSE SOMETIMES.Ihave been a headset man for 14 years so i was taught by on old-timer and he always started his headset call with"Ground to flight deck good day SIR" and i have always adressed thr flight deck as "SIR" but would be interested to know if the modern day headset men are still taught the same way.Any captains enlighte me?

Does anyone seriously think we could do with a third handling agent at EMA?

I honestly can't see there being a need for a third handling agent if Menzies are interested in expanding their presence at the airport. Realistically next summer there are 5 main contracts; TUIfly, Thomas Cook, Ryanair, easyJet and bmi group ramp (obviously there's also the Eastern and XL). Considering that Menzies are growing each year, then there should be enough contracts to sustain two relatively sized handling agents. A third would just pull costs down to uneconomic levels, and that alongside lack of office or ramp space, I think was the reason neither Aviance or Swissport came in last summer. I'm sure though if Ryanair are persuasive enough they'll get what they want.

Well having worked on the ramp as a baggage handler at Belfast City for 3 years before moving onwards and upwards I know the pressure's placed on ground staff. We all rely on eachother to keep things running. Kudos to ground staff in offloading/loading B738's. As pilots we know time is tight on the ground but do our best to get in early to allow some extra breathing space. I think tho to many a time this EMA thread drifts.

Heard one of the flying schools are to depart EMA as the lease is up with posible extension of ramp towards that area.

As for the question on the headset, even though its captains who talk to the staff its just always nice to have a pleasant "Hello" :O

Dont forget the UPS contract. When i worked at TNT I saw endless lads working on it, at TNT we only had 4/5 people loading an a/c, not including the tug drivers.