Was having a read of this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62295867 on Aunt Beebs notice of disinformation and it got me wondering – why don’t airports pay/arrange all of the ground crews?

To me it seems odd, that you have a hugely complex infrastructure to manage, but a lot of that (most) is down the 3rd parties that you don’t actually have control over.. Why is that?

D

If an airline stops flying to your airport, you aren’t stuck with a load of staff doing nowt?

As Tom, and I’d also expect certain procedures to vary from carrier to carrier, training to only be applicable to specific aircraft so if ground staff only need training on the ones flown by a specific carrier not every aircraft ever. The airline can move the staff from location to location in order to cover load etc. The amount of crew you need will vary by destination and carrier – BA transatlantic is very unlikely to be hand luggage only, Ryanair Manchester to Dublin, much more so etc.

There will be a lot of reasons, all of which will be £££.

Some airlines do employ their own ground staff (Wizzair I think). Airlines have chosen to pay for a service. There will be economies that dictate what is the most cost-effective strategy, and that appears to be outsource to contractors at the airport. Of course, COVID upset that strategy in the short term as the contractors were released, but I expect it will be temporary. It’s faster to lose staff than recruit them.

Back to the OP, I wouldn’t trust a word Ryanair said about anything! This is just another marketing opportunity for them….

Bit like Bojo’s 40 new hospitals he built….

I hadnt appreciated the different aircraft thing, so can see how this impacts in the current way of doing things. However, if you’re selling slots for aircraft, surely the fee for that would coincide with the difficulty of the airline being used. IN the case of the baggage farce, surely the airport in this instance should be saying – you don’t have the ground crew, so no flights – but they didnt (initially – and i think it still only is a “you might wan to reduce your flights).. For me it’s in the airports best interest that they provide a “one-stop-shop” which is fully within their control – just feels a bit backwards..

There was an incredible statment form Qatar or emirates the other day about Heathrow stitching them up. Was in the Guardian.

https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-statement-on-operations-at-london-heathrow/

14 July 2022 – Emirates values our partnerships with airport stakeholders across our network with whom we engage continuously, and collaboratively, to secure our flight operations and ensure minimal customer disruption, particularly over the peak travel months.

It is therefore highly regrettable that LHR last evening gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, of a figure that appears to be plucked from thin air. Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we should throw out paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance.

This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands.

At London Heathrow airport (LHR), our ground handling and catering – run by dnata, part of the Emirates Group – are fully ready and capable of handling our flights. So the crux of the issue lies with the central services and systems which are the responsibility of the airport operator.

Emirates is a key and steadfast operator at LHR, having reinstated 6 daily A380 flights since October 2021. From our past 10 months of regularly high seat loads, our operational requirements cannot be a surprise to the airport.

Now, with blatant disregard for consumers, they wish to force Emirates to deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers who have paid for, and booked months ahead, their long-awaited package holidays or trips to see their loved ones. And this, during the super peak period with the upcoming UK holidays, and at a time when many people are desperate to travel after 2 years of pandemic restrictions.

Emirates believes in doing the right thing by our customers. However, re-booking the sheer numbers of potentially impacted passengers is impossible with all flights running full for the next weeks, including at other London airports and on other airlines. Adding to the complexity, 70% of our customers from LHR are headed beyond Dubai to see loved ones in far flung destinations, and it will be impossible to find them new onward connections at short notice.

Moving some of our passenger operations to other UK airports at such short notice is also not realistic. Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall.

The bottomline is, the LHR management team are cavalier about travellers and their airline customers. All the signals of a strong travel rebound were there, and for months, Emirates has been publicly vocal about the matter. We planned ahead to get to a state of readiness to serve customers and travel demand, including rehiring and training 1,000 A380 pilots in the past year.

LHR chose not to act, not to plan, not to invest. Now faced with an “airmageddon” situation due to their incompetence and non-action, they are pushing the entire burden – of costs and the scramble to sort the mess – to airlines and travellers.

The shareholders of London Heathrow should scrutinise the decisions of the LHR management team.

Given the tremendous value that the aviation community generates for the UK economy and communities, we welcome the action taken by the UK Department for Transport and Civil Aviation Authority to seek information from LHR on their response plans, systems resilience, and to explain the seemingly arbitrary cap of 100,000 daily passengers. Considering LHR handled 80.9 million passengers annually in 2019, or a daily average of 219,000, the cap represents greater than a 50% cut at a time when LHR claims to have 70% of ground handling resources in place.

Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from LHR.

For me it’s in the airports best interest that they provide a “one-stop-shop” which is fully within their control – just feels a bit backwards..

Lack of competition. Its not as if airlines will move their flights from say LHR to DSA because of a few baggage issues. The main selling point of any airport is its location.

As I understand it some airlines such as BA will have their own ground staff, others will pay a supplier , such as Swissport, to provide the service. Ground crew can cover a wide range of duties, luggage handling (and obviously stealing) fuelling, cleaning etc. Not sure who provides pushing back and parking services. So not strictly the airport’s problem but also it may be down to a contractor rather than the airline as well.

The security staff is an airport responsibility as Ryanair state.

I chatted to a Boeing service engineer at a party and he said the issue was staffing.
Getting rid of ground staff during covid and those people getting other jobs that paid the same or more money with better working conditions and no need to work silly hours and live near the airport, the other issue was any new hire has to be background/security checked.

ooof that Emirates PR release is a bit a of a shooeing to LHR – if it’s only remotely correct then LHR should be hanging heads in shame – see the model doesn’t- an airline can do all it can, and then a bunch of **** can screw it..

so maybe then Mr Oleary has some reason to be angry..

Security staff are also not from the airport, they come from Border Force ie the Government

Plus there’s a delay in the background security checks caused by…yes you’ve guessed it the letting staff go during Covid and not fully restaffing which is further compounded by Covid related absences.
Ukrainian refugees (remember them?) are getting top priority for security checks, then the airport worker candidates (who can’t be hired until checks are cleared) and so on.

It’s having a knock on effect on other industries too like IT contractors who want to work for weapons companies, BAe, banks etc etc. etc. etc.

The Govt is not to blame for any of this at any point. It’s all Johnny Foreigner/Covid/Lazy immigrants/EU/pixies/leaves on the line/Jeremy Corbyn’s fault

Security staff are also not from the airport,

Security staff at LHR are employees of the airport. Handling staff are contracted via an intermediary. Heathrow released a lot of security staff and it takes an age to rehire, clear checks and train. Son2 took more than three months (before covid) from acceptance to starting at Heathrow security. He was their youngest ever security officer and joined at 18, after A levels, to save for flying.

they come from Border Force ie the Government

Border force do not do airport security, they have a responsibility for integrity of the uk borders (how’s that one going) but not security of facilities or searching passengers other than preventive controls.