MAN told to speed up bag delivery

[sacktheboard]

Airport told to speed up bag delivery
Ian Craig

MANCHESTER Airport bosses have been urged to speed up baggage handling.

Euro MP Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat, claims he has evidence that lengthy delays at the baggage carousels are angering more and more passengers.

Several have made their feelings known recently, although the airport's worst example was in 2003. Police were called to quell a "near-riot" when hundreds of holidaymakers had to wait up to two hours for their bags.

Officers were called to Terminal One because 458 passengers were "chanting, stamping their feet and slow-handclapping" when their bags failed to turn up after their flight from Turkey.

The airline - Air Atlanta - blamed the delay on baggage staff going off sick.

Process

Mr Davies says airport authorities claimed they have no powers to insist on minimum standards for baggage handling, but he adds that the Department of Transport told him there were no laws to prevent them speeding up the baggage hall process.

"Manchester Airport owns the arrivals' hall and the baggage carousels and if it wants to insist on higher standards for passengers then it can surely lay down the law on the companies that use these facilities," said former Oldham MP Mr Davies.

"It can do the airport's reputation no good if passengers are kept waiting for their luggage for almost as long as their plane is in the air."

The general manager of Terminals One and Three, Mike Fazackerley, recognises the need to improve services.

In a letter to the MEP he says bosses are trying to improve training for handling agents to help managers to identify problem areas.

Do airports need to speed up baggage handling? Have your say.


http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/news/comments/view.html?story_id=156019[/URL]

© Copyright 2005 Manchester Evening News.

[TheOddOne]

This is a dilemma we all face. The a/c operators privately employ handling agents under a competitive tendering process. Laws ARE in place which MAKE all airports over a certain size allow as many Handling Agents to operate as wish to. The level of service offered is commenserate with the price paid. It comes as no surprise that the lowest fare charter operators go for the minimum service and it also comes as no surprise that the pax who have paid rock bottom for their holiday are also the first to complain in an undignified and unproductive way when they only get the service they have paid for. Sadly, 2 hours has been experienced at more than one major UK airport.

Another 'no surprise' is that the airport gets stuck with the tag of being the cause of the delays. Sure, we own the carousels and the arrivals hall, but we have little or no control over the contract between the HA and the airline. Many pax don't know what airline they travelled with and they certainly won't have heard of Groundstar, Aviance or Servisair or whoever. But they WILL remember Gatwick, Manchester, Luton or wherever as the place where they had to wait for their bags.

I've waited with my family for nearly 2 hours for my bags, so I know what it feels like.

The full service airlines seem to but extra effort into providing excellent service. A colleague with a small child went through LHR recently, with Big Airlines. Their bags were on the carousel when they got to the arrivals hall, but no buggy. They were very surprised but delighted when a loader immediately appeared with it and said ' there you are, this must be yours, I've been looking out for you'.

That's the service level everyone else should aspire to. It costs money AND years of inculcating a service ethic into your staff.

Cheers,
The Odd One

[Sir George Cayley]

And Manchester Airport plc's profit last year was?

And the year before?

And the year before?

And the.................?


Sir George Cayley

[WHBM]

Mr Davies says airport authorities claimed they have no powers to insist on minimum standards for baggage handlingNonsense. That's a cop-out. The handling agents are tenants of the airport and liable to whatever conditions the airport chooses (eg that airside drivers must have the right level of qualification). The only significant constraints are that the terms must be reasonable (and they would be) and that they must be applied equally to all handling agents.

So let's have part of the contract that specifies this in some detail. Sure there are times like when a given agent gets 5 arrivals together. Well they have to handle it. Maybe by subcontracting out to another agent, or however they choose. 90% of all flights to have all bags delivered within say 30 minutes would give a little leeway for occasional issues like jammed hold doors.

[jabird]

Does the cynic in me spot another gravy train politician trying to get a bit of attention for his party with an election round the corner.

I thought the Lib Dems didn't like people flying anyway - except for Mr K's personal ATR42 of course, which just happens to be based at an airport his two local candidates here want to shut down, taking hundreds of jobs out of the area.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure MAN has issues to sort out - ditto for BHX, which is also pretty slow imho.

[Irish Steve]

The handling agents are tenants of the airport and liable to whatever conditions the airport chooses (eg that airside drivers must have the right level of qualification). The only significant constraints are that the terms must be reasonable (and they would be) and that they must be applied equally to all handling agents.

Spent 3 years working for SA in DUB. In theory, DUB has rules about how quickly things are supposed to happen, in practice, DAA ( the airport operator) doesn't enforce them, or even care most of the time.

Training and ramp qualifications is another sick joke, I got fired for doing a job that I'd been more than trained for before even joining SA, and with which the aircraft operator was 110% happy, but that was how the local politics worked.

Points made about costs and the like are true, but the other side of that is that too often, management of the handlers are bad (or worse) and that filters down to the ramp level.

Add to that carefully managed understaffing, under equipping and inadequate equipment maintenance, and the picture becomes even worse.

I was sent to turn round A300's and the like on several occasions with a crew of 3, so 4 total, and no driver for the high loader, so I had to try and supervise the rest of the crew and operate the HiLo at the same time, in that scenario it's no wonder that things get delayed.

Another issue is the availability of equipment, for all of summer 2002, DUB was handling at least 6 wide body flights at the same time at weekends with 4 highloaders, and one of the 6 (CO 767-400) had to have 2 Hilo's to meet the contracted turn round time!

If one of the flights ended up on a remote stand, it was even worse, as there was also an acute shortage of servicable wide body steps. I could go on, but i think the picture is only too clear

Problem is, the airlines don't really care too much, as they can blame either the airport or the handling agent, and the industry in general is unfotunately pretty indifferent to handling issues, I posted a thread recently on the Ground Ops forum about handling issues and training/experience, and got 0 replies, so maybe that should tell us something.

At DUB, with a ramp staff in the summer of close on 200, I was the only one with any "real" aviation experience, and that included the operational and senior management.

There are times when the carrier can be blamed. Onur Air A300 arrived in DUB a couple of seasons ago, we set up at the rear hold, opened it up, and it was empty! Move everything to the front, open that up, and what do we find? 8 bins of bags? No, 3 Cargo Pallets, with the bags on them, netted down.

I leave it to your imagination how long it took us to scour the airport to find empty bag dollies and cargo dollies on a very busy weekend, and to then transfer all the bags from the pallets onto dollies, as there's no way to get cargo pallets into the inbound baggage hall. Having done that, with a total crew of 4, we then had to load the outbound flight. It didn't depart on time!

Yes, very rarely, doors do stick, but the much more common issue is either floor rollers that don't work, or bins that are so out of shape and overloaded, there's no way short of gelignite to get the damn thing out of the aircraft, and that comment can apply to "full service" carriers, the ones in the States and Canada that are in Chapter 11 being prime examples.

We've all seen in recent weeks the comments about other issues at DUB. The airport managers/operators have been able to get away with all manner of things for years, but the deferred issues are now coming home to roost big time, and its' going to be very interesting to see how a number of airports address these issues, as the ones that don't, no matter how large, will suffer.