Thumbs down Menzies
 

A massive thumbs down to Menzies at MAN For the complete cockup this morning on the BA flight to LGW. One hour delay due to a bag discrepancy. That must be a record! And to top it off it took 10 mins to work out how to operate the air start cart!!!!! One failed start as a result!

Sounds like a training issue to me.....

Menzies never been renowned for their over zealous training departments :zzz:

Bag discrepancies happen from time to time due to various reasons regardless of the handling agent so why single out Menzies :hmm:

The delay in question was caused by a computer error within BRITISH AIRWAY's own system. Essentially, the bags in question that were causing a discrepency were transfer bags that the computer did not account for on the flight in question but counted them on the connecting flight thus indicating 'bags-up' to the Dispatcher. This is the second time in a week it has happened at MAN and is being investigated by the computer experts. However, as with most bags up situations, it takes some amount of investigation work before the root cause of the discrepency is found and as 750XL states, can happen to any handling agent. So I'd be careful before making derogetory towards the handling agent before finding out the full facts.

Thumbs up to Menzies
 

I'd rather it take 10hrs to sort a bag discrepancy than have a bag go BOOM mid flight. I doubt they held you up for more than they needed to to be absolutely sure that flight was safe... Maybe it's lack of training on your part?.. Pilots love to sound off to ground crew when they themselves have absolutely no knowledge of ground ops and the problems that can arise. Have some patience, I'm sure they've had to stick around after their shifts have finished for late inbounds..... When they do, do you post here praising them?

At the end of the day - the safeguards and checks are there for a reason. Far better to take a delay than to regret it after an aircraft has gone airborne.

Is that an apology then?

Apology for what?

Seems like Menzies followed procedure to establish why they didn't have the correct number of bags due to a Computer Error! It is a government requirement for the appointed person to make sure every bag on the flight is accounted for; no matter how long it takes!

Even, if it takes a full baggage ID by the passengers themselves.

Wow, nothing like bringing up a 2 year old story. If they went a bag up and your flight went down because of a wrong bag, do you think your family would be happy? Some passengers just do not have a clue as to what goes on, I don't know if your in the job or not, but I assume people do not tell you how to do your job, so I'm guessing the TRM at MAN would like a clueless passenger not to stick their nose in giving them a bad reputation when these things happen!

Sadly judging by past experience the original posters attitude towards a 'bag up' situation is one I often see from Captains.

Allowing a flight to depart with a 'bag up' can actually lead to prison time for the appointed person.

Do I smell a rather large rodent here? Swissport is about to lose the Monarch contract, Menzies is one of those in the frame to get it and a two-year-old totally unrelated thread unfairly critical of Menzies is suddenly resurrected for no discernible reason. :hmm:

All handling agents have their ups and downs. Give swissport 2 years ago and they were probably thee place to be. They are now loosing contracts, the person who started this thread, try travel with an airline currently handles by swissport and see if you can relate to the current arrivals on a night where they are waiting for a couple of hours waiting just for an airbridge. Menzies MAN seem to be on the up at the moment with a few contracts possibly coming their way. Try travel jet2 with tenor handling agent who are currently struggling too. Like I said, they all have ups and downs, the last thing the staff need is people
Like you posting rubbish like that when all they are doing is their job and trying to get you on your holiday!

BA don't operate to gat wick from man and haven't done for good while.

I've had some bad experiences in the past months with Menzies, arriving at or departing from LHR's terminal 1. On several occasions, we had to wait for 10-15 minutes inside the aircraft because there was no-one at the gate, either to operate the jet bridge or to marshall the plane to its parking position (automatic parking system being inop). I mean, it's always such a surprise when an airplane they need to service turns up out of nowhere...

And then on one occasion, it took one and a half hours for them to deliver the bags. The reason being given was "staff shortage". That is a massive thumbs down from me for Menzie's services.

Also it is no good service to display the aircraft as "on time" on the departures screen, and then to only display the gate 3 minutes before the scheduled departure time of the aircraft (happened to my flight LX319 on Jul 14). This makes you effectively stand and wait in front of the screens for 45 minutes so you don't miss your plane, when you could also be sitting in a café.

All in all I give them a 1/5.

The issue with "no one at the gate" is false. There is, bar some freak accident, always someone at the gate to meet the flights. LX depart almost always from T2B gates now and have done since June. These gates are brand new, however, the guidance system does, on occasion fail at the last minute. There simply aren't enough marshallers at Menzies to have standing waiting at every gate for one of their aircraft to come in just in case the system fails, that's not realistic. It is unfortunate that you experienced this, but it was simply down to LHR having a broken stand and not strictly MZ. On occasion the person who marhsalls in the plane then has to run up and put the jetty on, so don't automatically assume no one is there to meet the plane, they are just prioritising what needs done. Marhsall, Chocks, Jetty, Doors.

Waiting an hour plus for bags...yup..that's Menzies fault, no argument there, that's just poor planning or lack of staff...only they can fix that and they probably won't any time soon, especially if Swissport is getting all the bad press right now they have no reason to unless it becomes spread over the news like LGW had. Airlines go to handling agents to keep costs down, and handling agents keep staff numbers as low as possible so the airlines get as cheap a price as possible.

Also, Menzies do not control the screens at LHR. At LHR stands are not allocated until the aircraft is "zoning". That is neither LX nor Menzies decision to make where the plane goes, but no doubt you would have blamed the gate staff for "opening the gate too late". It is a silly system which operates at LHR (and other UK Airports) where they say the gate will open at a certain time. If the plane is late then it will open later than that and you get people crowding round and then panicking when it goes 2 minutes beyond the "gate will open at" time. It also causes people to not pay attention and if the plane comes in 10 or 15 minutes early then that person then misses the initial gate announcement because the screen told them to come back later.

I'm not saying Menzies are perfect, they are far from it, but not everything directed at them is their fault.

Apparently a "big announcement" is immenent at Menzies BHX :oh:.
Could they be losing either Flybe (contract up for renewal) or Monarch ? both airlines have received very poor levels of support from Menzies during the summer, possibly due to major expansion too quickly and a severe lack of trained and experienced staff.
it is a regular occurence seeing a BE/ZB aircraft sitting off stand awaiting ramp staff, and BHX 's coffers are filling up nicely from the amount of fines handed out by its airfield ops staff to Menzies for badly parked or abandoned gse.:ok:

I believe most stations would like to loose the flybe contract as I hear it is one of thee worst contracts to handle. Aircraft swaps at the last minute, ringing half way through boarding an aircraft to stop boarding as they want the aircraft to go elsewhere. The constant aircraft changes as there Is such a issue with the amount of constant tech aircraft in the fleet. They always want want want and never give the agent anything on return.
Handling agents also struggle as they work to a set arrival and departure time, and when the aircraft comes in half an hour early, they expect you to be there waiting for them which doesn't work, meaning they hold off stand etc... When they run late, they expect you to drop every thing for them but it's a different story when they are waiting for the agents staff for the turn around. The last part is about most airlines not just one.
Don't get me wrong, I hear most handling agents are just as bad as each other as the airlines drive down the prices meaning they can't pay for staff. It's a downward spiral but what doesn't help is the amount off staff who work for them who constantly complain how rubbish it is to work for them and that. All I can say is that if you don't like it, it's a a simple solution, hand your pass in and disappear. If a company pays your wages, you should try your best for them.

Thumbs down Menzies
 

We've got Mon for 5 years at BHX and at LTN as well.
The Flybe contract is up for renewal, but I'm not aware that either Servisair/Swissport or Aviator have gone for it...

As has been said above, in peak times we do sometimes get a/c hanging off stand, but that is usually due to flights arriving massively early and so there is no staff available to meet them.

We recruited quite heavily at the beginning of the summer and currently have 3 external trainers at BHX to assist the current trainers with getting all the ramp staff as fully trained as possible and as quickly as they can.

As for fines for leaving GSE parked inappropriately, I am only aware of a couple of instances and it's happened at T1. I do see Servisair staff get spoken to quite often by Ops at T2, as they regularly leave steps in the clearway all day for the RYR a/c - Flybe also use those stands so they get in the way for us.

I agree that Menzies isn't perfect and there is still a way to go to get in top of things, but with the training that's currently going on, hopefully it won't be too much longer before we can get back up to speed.

The reason why Menzies don't have enough staff to Marshall aircraft onto stand is because no GHA do this. That's for Airfield Ops.
Could be last minute gate allocation and the staff are at the opposite end of the terminal.

In BHX it is the responsibility of the GHA to set the guidance system, or marshall a/c if it is unserviceable or not installed. If airfield ops get involved it is a £70 charge to the GHA for doing their job, part of Menzies cashflow problem!!

I believe it's the same in MAN, but as mentioned before it doesn't help when the aircraft arrive 25 mins early and then hold off stand as their ground crew are on a previous flight.

not everywhere... GHAs do carry out marshaling at a lot of Airports. Maybe not in the UK but elsewhere for sure....

In Defence of Menzies
 

I worked for Menzies in BNE in 2008-2009 after coming from a Turn Co-ordinator position with the national carrier in AKL.

The position was part time with split shifts but everyone is told that before being appointed.

I found the training was very good, our main carrier at that time was DJ, with TG, EY, BI, ON. We also took CX away from QF.

We had daily meetings with management at the end of each shift,
which were always very constructive and informative with periodical
1 on 1 meetings with management to assess our progress and to discuss
any issues which either, management or the staff member had.

So hat's off to Menzies, I consider, as an ex staff member they do a good job and have staff morale and staff wellbeing well in their minds. :ok:

In case anyone wonders, I missed the land of the long white cloud, the shaky isles and came back in 2009 and now work for the NZ Government in an industry that is far removed from the aviation industry.

From my understanding, it's just the UK arm of Menzies aviation that has allowed itself to deteriorate to an unsustainable position due in part to agreeing contracts that they are then unable to fulfill with any meaningful return. Both Menzies and Swissport have been slitting each others throats for the last 6 - 7 years, which, is great if you're an airline accountant, but has had the negative effect of poor yields within the business, extremely poor working conditions for the staff, A poor service to the customers and a damaged reputation.
There has recently been changes at the top within the U.K arm of Menzies aviation with some being shown the door for the above reasons. Will this mean changes to come ! - wait and see.

GHA do the marshalling at LTN

Your lucky you don't work for the Circus at dnata , as my poor old mate does ......morale sinking faster than the Belgrano ....

The Menzies Boys don't help themselves, today I watched a Menzies EBT pulling a dolly of bags and wondered which bag would fall off first. When the inevitable happened the Menzies EBT behind stopped to pick it up, unfortunately the one that was tailgating him was so close that he didn't. Fortunately the driver didn't meet the windscreen! Tearing around at way over the speed limit in the minibuses trying to catch up with aircraft waiting off stand is an accident waiting to happen as well. Just because you don't have enough staff to do the contracts isn't an excuse to do things that put you in danger!

Lots of incidents at BHX, offloading front hold bags causing a few near misses with aircraft tipping,the most recent was stopped by the rear pax door wedging against the aircraft steps.

trying to push an A320 with an Embraer towbar.

aircraft steps being continually left on empty stand even with motor still running on the self propelled type.

I appreciate its a big contract but inexperienced staff unfortunately will result in something more serious happening.

I too am an ex-Menzies employee. Having worked for them at 2 airports (EDI/LHR) I can say that when I was first with them it was much like you describe. Good training, good relationship between staff and management, always enough people to ensure customers received a good service. The staffing levels were perfect and there was hardly a time where I felt stressed or overworked.

This continued when I made the move to LHR and stayed with them but gradually as people naturally left or got promoted I soon realised no one was filling the gaps. More airlines came to MZ, but barely any new staff joined to meet demand, so the existing ones were simply spread out. Service level agreements went unmet and the staff were so overworked that sickness became much higher. The training steadily became weaker and weaker, people were shoved on to airline products with minimal, sometimes no training at all and left to deal with all sorts of problems. I still know a few people who are with Menzies and morale is still through the floor as next to nothing has been done to tackle these problems. This is not, I understand, unique to MZ at LHR, it seems to be the whole UK. It is a shadow of it's former self and honestly I'm so glad I got out when I did as it's just spiralled down further since I did.

I do hope the new senior management turn it around because it's getting to the stage where the damage being done could be irreversible for them. :(

Birmingham Airport family's THREE-HOUR wait for luggage - Birmingham Mail

:ok:

Flybe's waiting off stand, tug and bar left on shaded area at top of stand whilst Ryanair taxying to that particular stand.

just a normal day at BHX :(

oh and we wont mention the ramp guy who tweeted a reply to the above article on delayed bags which has since been printed by the local press resulting in his suspension.:ok:

Morale down

docking people for being 3 mins late, but expected to stay if flights late.

I don't think the morale is high at any of the HA's at the moment! :uhoh:

New rumour gaining momentum at BHX is that ASIG coming in to run the Flybe contract , seems a bit early for the contract to be awarded as the present contract expires in March 2015.
anyone else heard anything ?

I heard the same thing for EDI just a few days ago

I very much doubt there is any substance to the rumour at BHX as the contract won't be awarded until December for a March start.

Anyone know if Menzies have signed with Monarch for MAN & LGW?

Airline Services at LGW

Menzies MAN turned down TCX & MON due to them wanting this that and the other but not wanting to pay for it. MON is still up in the air but looking like they are going back to swissport.

Announcement due at BHX within next 2 weeks, looks certain that Menzies have lost the Flybe contract, and with the future of ZB uncertain, it just shows how quickly things change in aviation, at the start of this summer menzies had the 2 largest contracts at BHX, but lack of trained personnel has let them down.