BA ground handling at LHR.

[aex]

Hi everyone,
I'm new and I'm very interested in ground handling and the air transport industry. I have a question that has always come to my mind. Why are BA so small in third party handling compared to other European airlines. If you look at KLM at AMS they handle so many airlines, same for Iberia, SAS Ground etc. While BA only handle themselves Qantas and SN. It does not make sense to me, they only handle Qantas as fellow oneworld partner; Iberia etc all rely on different ground handlers.


Thanks very much


aex

[747-436]

BA have enough trouble handling themselves so to handle anyone else would be pushing it a bit!

I imagine the reason is that it is a lot of extra hassle and if you lose a contract then you have a lot of excess resources that you then don't really need. It is not BA's main field of work at LHR.

At other Airports there may be agreements in place that limit access of third party handlers, hence why the national carrier does so much. At Heathrow this is not the case.

[KiloMIke]

BA pulled out of third party handling in 1997(I think).

I believe they felt there was not enough money and they wanted to concentrate on their core business of flying.

[747-436]

Sounds about right that they pulled out of third party handling in the late 1990's.

[HZ123]

As this is a rumour network it is possible that BA ramp will be outsourced in the next couple of years. This looks to be odds on at LGW where the performance has not been good enough over the years. The loss of ramp services at LHR & LGW would wipe out a further 3000 staff from the staff levels which Willie Walsh would be keen on doing. BA do service Air Lanka / Qantas / Finair.

[aex]

Interesting, so BA could sell the ground handling as far as the ramp is concerned? To be honest they've been doing this in quite a few places such as JFK. A friend of mine told me that BA subcontracts the ramp in JFK to Evergreen Handling. I don't see the point in keeping the ramp if you don't have third party customers. BA would be better off creating their ground handling company (even with minority ownership) with specialised companies like Swissport. In Heathrow many much smaller airlines like Alitalia handle many more airlines than BA, which makes it a unique case.

[bmibaby.com]

I think in the future, we might see more cases like easyJet have at Luton. The airline has now essentially outsourced their handling operation at LTN to Menzies Aviation, who are a specialist handling agent. However, to ensure that there is quality control, and branding opportunities, easyJet owns 25% of the LTN operation which is completely easyJet branded.

[747-436]

I am sure that BA ground handling might be outsourced eventually, I think that is Willie Walsh's next union battle anyway! There are some old style practices that go on in BA ground handling at LHR that need to be sorted out, such as people assigned to only one job.

For instance you can have an aircraft waiting on a remote stand with a steps driver at the ready but the steps don't go on as they are waiting for someone to put the chocks in. This goes on and on through different aspects of loading etc. In a past life over at Terminal 3 the handling agent there was much more efficient. Everyone did everything to get the job done, so the first person who arrived put the chocks on, then helped someone else with whatever needed to be done next, so much better!!

BA need to sort it out soon!!!

[HZ123]

436 you observe correctly however some of the actions are also driven by safety considerations. No equipment shoud ever be placed on the a/c until it is chocked and the F/C confirm brakes are set to 'park'.

Easy always outsourced the 'GHA' and they were lucky to obtain the services of' Reed Aviation.

The arguement for outsourcing rumbles on one of the key points in having your own should be a better service? However, BA has a futher problem in that being large at the moment there are no companies big enough to take us on. If you commit to a GHA they service a number of airlines and may not give the best service due to divided loyalties and also promising far more than they can achieve. (dont we all).

[747-436]

My point is why can't the steps driver put the chocks on instead of just sitting around waiting for someone to come and do it!?!?!

In other companies people are trained to multi task, thus getting the job done much more quickly!

[HZ123]

You are right, more should be done by the individual but there is still demarkation and very poor ramp mangement, a fact reflected in the poor service provided at t4 and T1. To be fair T4 ramp staff are far more flexible but in all there needs to be a complete sea change in attitude.

[aex]

I don't understand what is the point of keeping ground handling in-house if you don't offer services to third party airlines. As it has been mentioned before the only way I see BA outsourcing the ramp (in LHR) is to find a partner like Easyjet has done in Luton. In JFK I read that BA outsourced the ramp to Evergreen Eagle (I think).

By the way what is going to happen to the BA staff in other airports with the sale of BA Connect? Are Flybe going to provide ground handling or are they going to outsource it. The sale of BA Connect could be seen as the start of the outsourcing of the ground services.

[LHR_777]

BA actually stopped handling SriLankan Airlines (not Air Lanka!) back in June 2006. After 20+ years of handling UL, it was mutually decided that as SriLankan isn't a OneWorld carrier, and they would not be moving to T5, it was time to agree to hand over the contract to another handling agent. In this case, KLM Ground Services in Terminal 4.

It was no great loss to BA, as from a handling perspective it was a right royal pain in the butt, but we do still have a very good relationship with the UL staff in T4.

[Jonny81]

Hola - it was a requirement of the Council of the EU that by 1999 airports with a pax volume in excess of 2mil were REQUIRED to provide airlines with a choice a MINIMUM of two GHS options. This directive was in direct response the the old model of European GHS (which can still be found in the US) where either the State or the Airline (in particular legacy carriers like BA or KLM) operated all GHS out of their hubs. This meant there was no competition and these airlines could essentially charge what they liked. As we see today, there are many airport GHS operators (Servisair, Swissport) - and this is due to the requirements set out by the EU Council Directive 96/67/EC in 1996 to be brought into effect at all EU airports from 1 Jan 1999 but no later than 31 Dec 2002. You can find this directive online - but it's quite dense and fairly heavy reading. The articles you want in particular are Articles (1c) and (6) - hope this helps.