Raising the Safety Bar
By Thomas P. Slavin, Million Air-Cleveland
January/ February 2001
Fixed base operators face a reality of changing service standards
This article deals with the kinds of changes that have taken place in some of the larger FBOs during these past few years. Many more changes - call them FBO improvements - will be needed in the future.
In
larger cities and at busier airports general aviation
FBOs are becoming complicated businesses. Owners oftentimes
are not operators; ownership chains are developing.
Service standards have changed and remain in a state
of flux. Pricing is becoming segmentized and far more
complicated.
Changes will be needed
because issues like recruitment, retention and training
of line service staffers; responsibility for maintaining
sensitivity to the environment; understanding the nature
and quality of service required by GA aircraft that
are far larger than those that were historically found
on our ramps; the internationalization of our customer
base; the complexity of insurance-related issues; the
growth of service provider audits Éthese, and many more
issues, simply need to be addressed.
Here are three examples
of how Million Air Cleveland is addressing these issues.
Safety 1st
Today's customers, flying
very expensive high performance aircraft, have every
right to demand that the individuals that marshal, fuel,
deice, and assume responsibility for their aircraft
should be well trained.
The National Air Transportation
Association's Safety 1st program, with written and manual
testing components, has established the "bar"
for the industry. It's up to FBO owners and operators,
our customers, and our insurance carriers to mandate
further line service skills enhancement.
It seems reasonable to
focus on the fact that line service safety training
and regulation makes more sense if effected "within"
- in our case, by our industry trade group, NATA.
Why? Consider for a minute
a major incident precipitated by poorly or non-trained
line service staff. There would of course be adverse
publicity and an investigation would reveal any training
deficiencies by the responsible FBO. The rightful public
outcry would be deafening.
The pundits would argue
that if industry doesn't train and monitor line service
competency, than the government must step into the role.
Assuming a compelling argument, who would be a more
likely regulator than the FAA? This is an option few
FBO operators would embrace.
Certainly, our insurance
carriers - outspoken proponents of Safety 1st - will
pressure FBOs that have safety problems by either raising
premiums or denying coverage. And, by both demanding
and recognizing improved skill levels of our employees,
we FBO operators will in all likelihood have to address
demands for improvements in wage and benefits.
As a consequence of the
above, FBOs are going to move in the direction of making
line service a "career" for folks that love
working with aircraft. With better trained line service
technicians who are earning more, our pilot customers
are simply going to have to pay for what they say they
want most: a higher skill level among FBO line service
staffers.
ISO—Q9001 -
DEFINING QUALITY
In the book Quality is
Free, author Philip Crosby states that quality is conformance
to requirements. These requirements either come from
the customer or they come from some imposition on the
FBO operator. The imposition might require that a FBO
operator conform to governmental (Military, DOD) or
customer quality conformance audits simply to retain
the customer. Crosby also says that quality has to do
with measurable characteristics. If something cannot
be measured it cannot possess quality.
How does this relate to
FBOs? Further, why would an FBO want to become ISO certified?
First, in the perception
of many, ISO designations in some way measure quality,
and FBOs want to assert themselves and their services
as being effected with quality. In pilot questionnaires,
pilots state that they both know and can very clearly
express what they perceive quality to be. They say,
"Don't provide it, and you'll see us on your competitor's
ramp."
Yet FBO operators don't
really know if the attainment of an ISO certification
will mean anything. Many of us in aviation have heard
of limited ISO applications within the context of aircraft
repair stations, and that certainly makes sense. And,
we know that an ISO certification is not a common standard
for FBOs that simply fuel, hangar, and provide ground
support to aircraft. Finally, most of us, when thinking
about the ISO certification process, think of it as
prevalent in the manufacturing segment.
The difference is that
the noted standard, Q9001: 2000 certification, focuses
on the service sector of the economy. It's a new program
introduced in the fourth quarter of 2000.
Who recognizes the standard?
Our international aviation customers already recognize
the implicit value of an ISO designation because the
standard is better recognized and more widely accepted
abroad, particularly in Europe. I suggest that the next
aviation market sector that's going to recognize ISO
certification is the fractional ownership component.
The cost expenditures
for FBO due diligence expended by fractionals are already
significant. Wouldn't it be far less expensive for the
fractionals to outsource objective due diligence to
ISO auditors, eliminating the in-house costs and simply
stating, "We're going to require that our FBO service
providers fly the ISO flag." What are we going
to do in anticipation of these kinds of expectations?
Million Air Cleveland
has registered for ISO certification. Currently, we're
in the process of going through the assessment process.
It is our company's intent to identify the processes
that constitute the components of how we conduct our
business. By adopting ISO standards, we agree to plan
for continual improvement, yet prepare (procedurally)
for both preventative and corrective actions in the
event of problems.
The ISO process is well-suited
to our industry, where there's zero tolerance for error.
I've advanced the concept of NATA again taking the lead
by helping to develop industry-specific standards in
conjunction with our country's ISO representative, The
American National Standards Institute (ANSI). FBO compliance
with ISO standards isn't with us yet; however, within
five years, I predict that many larger FBOs will of
necessity embrace the system. Again, our best customers
will demand it.
Expectations of Fractionals; the BBJ
Over the past year or
so, fractional operators have "raised the bar"
by conducting on-site audits of FBOs. Led by Executive
Jet, "Quality Assurance Reviews" have: a)
outlined the standards of customer expectations; b)
evaluated pursuant to on-site audits many FBOs for the
purpose of ascertaining conformance to expectations;
and c) favored those FBOs that were compliant with the
fractional's fueling business. The expectation level
of the fractional operators is high, but certainly not
unrealistic.
The securities industry
refers to this evaluation process as due diligence.
Nothing could be more logical - major customers want
to know virtually all there is to know about the people
with whom they are considering doing business. I'm all
for it - it brings into focus what our customers see
when they patronize our FBO. Of course I want to raise
the bar and generate more business - so I listen and
make every effort to comply.
An even higher level of
on-site audit inspection is being effected by Executive
Jet and Boeing, as they consider FBOs and airports for
inclusion on the BBJ-approved list put together by the
two companies. We at Burke Lakefront Airport/ Million
Air drew the short straw and were the first airport/FBO
to be jointly inspected by Executive Jet & Boeing. (Unlike
some FBOs, we already fuel and provide ground support
for between 25 to 30 727/737 aircraft a year.)
We quickly learned that
we're far from being expert in all the ramifications
associated with larger aircraft. To wit: the minimum
turning radius demanded by these aircraft; the load
bearing capacity of our ramp & runway; the height of
ramp lighting; FOD procedures; ARFF capabilities; spill
containment programs; snow and ice removal procedures
- the list of qualitative measures goes on and on.
Our answer to inspectors'
questions ("We already provide ground handling
for similar aircraft.") was answered by, "That
doesn't necessarily mean you're doing it right or that
your ramp has an adequate load bearing level needed
for safe operation."
In addition to inspections
of the fuel farm, ramps, hangar, and airport, the Boeing
and Executive Jet inspectors wanted to examine our 90
KVA GPU, air start, air stairs, fuel trucks, lav cart,
and all the other ground support equipment that's required
to be an approved provider. After thinking about the
due diligence process, I concluded: "Why fight
someone that in reality is trying to help us execute
our job in a more professional (and quality) manner?
About the Author
Thomas Slavin is president of Million Air-Cleveland, a full-service fixed base operation at Burke Lakefront Air-port. He is also an active member of the National Air Transpor-tation Association, sponsor of the Safety 1st line service certification program.
