Blog Archives
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Ground Support Equipment’s Birthday
By Steve Smith - Tuesday December 18, 2012
Yesterday and 109 years before, Orville Wright took off from the sand at Kill Devil Hills aboard the Wright Flyer into a freezing headwind of 27 miles per hour and flew about 35 yards. It doesn’t look like Orville checked a bag and the plane’s 12-horse power engine didn’t need much gas, but brother Wilbur is part of this milestone all the same. You can see Wilbur on the ground offering support to the Wright Flyer on its maiden voyage in the famous photograph accompanying today’s blog. It’s not too hard to imagine that Wilbur may have a wrench or two in his pockets on that cold day that a manned, heavier-than-air machine left the ground by its own power, moved forward under control without losing speed and landed on a point as... -
Getting Ready For AviationPros LIVE
By Steve Smith - Tuesday December 11, 2012
AviationPros LIVE, our annual conference and trade show that brings together the readers and advertisers of Ground Support Worldwide , and our sister publications Airport Business and AMT , will be held March 13-14 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The name of the show might be new, but as always attendees will have the chance to meet manufacturers and learn about the latest products and services on the exhibit floor, network during show events and take advantage of education seminars geared to ground support equipment. This year, Ground Support Worldwide will host two seminars each on March 13: Funding Options For Electric GSE, 11 a.m.-12 noon Neal Wolfe, a senior consultant with LeighFisher, to discuss not just... -
Taxibot Demo Day
By Steve Smith - Tuesday December 4, 2012
We got a first-hand look at the Taxibot towing system during a special demonstration put on for the media on the Monday before Thanksgiving at Chateauroux Airport. “Someday you can say you were a passenger of the very first jet towed by a Taxibot,” said Ran Braier, Taxibot project director for the Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., as we sat inside an A320 with the pilot firmly at the controls of both the plane and the Taxibot underneath. Yes, you heard that right. The pilot controls the speed of the Taxibot and essentially steers the vehicle with his tiller during towing procedures that, ideally, take the plane all the way to the runway without any power wasted from the plane’s engines. There are a few characteristics that... -
More On TLD
By Steve Smith - Tuesday November 27, 2012
We were somewhere over the Atlantic on our way back to ORD when you read last week’s GSW e-newsletter. Since we couldn’t cover everything in one blog, here are a few more highlights of our trip to France to see TLD’s Taxibot demo: Our trip started not much later than the time we arrived Sunday morning and made our way to the Sheraton, located at CDG. There, we met Fadi Anbouba, vice president of sales and service TLD America. Over espresso, Fadi told me more about TLD. Although TLD itself has been operating for the past 22 years, at least three of its former divisions, such as Ace, TRACMA and Lantis-Cochran, were true pioneers in GSE and began more than half century ago. TLD makes 15 lines of equipment and more than 100 models... -
Taxibot Demo Day
By Steve Smith - Tuesday November 20, 2012
We’re wrapping up the quickest European trip we’ve ever made. Two days of travel for two days of business that still packed in plenty of activities. Arrived at Charles DeGaulle Airport at 8:30 a.m., Sunday, and met up with Fadi Anbouba, vice president of sales and service for TLD America. Fadi outlined TLD’s global initiatives and discussed the reasons why his company invited the press to meet at Chateauroux Airport – a demonstration of TLD’s Taxibot, a towbarless tractor with the engineering prowess to not only push back a plane, but let the pilot essentially command the tractor and not so much be towed as drive the aircraft all the way to the foot of a runway without power from the aircraft’s engines. But witnessing that... -
Injustice For Swissport
By Steve Smith - Tuesday November 13, 2012It’s not every day we read a GSE story of international intrigue, corporate raiders, back room deals, even immoral business practices. But yesterday, one of our Google alerts sent us to The Loadstar blog, which recounts how a 2007 deal between Swissport and Ukraine International Airlines went south. The Good Guy Swissport bought a 51 percent stake in a ground handler called Interavia from UIA and set up Swissport Ukraine. Meanwhile, UIA kept a 30 percent interest in the Swissport business. By all accounts, the relationship between airline and ground handler are good. Meanwhile, Swissport Ukraine picks up business with 20 other customers. The Bad Guy Aron Mayberg, who acquired all of UIA when the airline was privatized last... -
How’s LGA Doing?
By Steve Smith - Tuesday November 6, 2012
We spent a solid 12 hours either inside our hotel room updating this e-newsletter or inside the Orlando Convention Center last week the day after Hurricane Sandy hit, in particular the NYC area. When we finally headed to dinner, we were prepared for the worst, but hadn’t seen anything of the devastation. Later that night, we saw this picture on an aviation Web site that questioned whether the image of a gate at LaGuardia Airport was faked. By the next day, it clearly wasn’t. LGA was closed for much of last week. We saw first-hand proof ourselves that the airport was back in business Thursday night when our flight to ORD shared the same luggage carousel as a flight from LGA. From the images we saw, we immediately wondered what the... -
Southwest Labor Troubles
By Steve Smith - Tuesday October 30, 2012A couple of weeks ago Southwest Airlines named Randy Babbitt to a newly created position as its vice president of labor relations. The former FAA administrator certainly knows the airline business. In addition to his work at the FAA, Babbitt was a pilot and served as the president and CEO of the Air Line Pilots Association. SWA has been in the news lately over labor negotiations with its ground handlers. The airline and its Transport Workers Union asked for help from federal mediators as talks stalled. In blog for Aviation Week posted earlier this month, Andrew Compart reports that the stalemate is connected with a memo sent to employees last December by CEO Gary Kelly. “We have a cost challenge, and it is one that looms large... -
Push Backs Without the Pushback? (VIDEO)
By Steve Smith - Tuesday October 23, 2012We’ve been following a number of ventures that promise to do a push back without the pushback. Although equipment makers, ranging from a joint venture between Honeywell and Safran and another one that joins L-3 and Crane as well as a stand-alone by WheelTug, may be using different methods all are working toward allowing aircraft to maneuver at the gate without ground support equipment. The end result? Reduced ground time and lower fuel use. In this Bloomberg article , for example, United says it burns through $25,000 worth of jet fuel a minute. “You could have tug-less airports,” said Ian Davies, chief of engineering and maintenance for discount airline EasyJet. “It might fundamentally change how we operate in... -
IATA IGOM Webinar
By Steve Smith - Tuesday October 16, 2012We hosted an IATA IGOM Webinar last week, which attracted almost 400 people from around the world to register. Attendees heard a discussion of IGOM from Joseph Suidan, head of ground operations, IATA, and Captain Peter Laasner, senior manager of ground operations, Swiss European Air Lines and chairman of the IGOM Task Force. If the AHM is “what” to do, the IGOM is “how” to do it. The main idea is to provide a single industry manual that standardizes procedures, which ISAGO can audit. Undoubtedly, the key benefit of IGOM is to improve ramp safety. On hand to field questions were Michael Thuersam, head of quality, health and safety, Swissport (and also vice chairman of the IGOM Task Force); Max Corsi, manager of airport...
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