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Battery Myth No. 4
By Todd Allen - Tuesday May 7, 2013
True or False: You don’t have to charge at night. False: Most GSE chargers are “opportunity” chargers. This means that it’s safe to charge a battery for short periods of time, when there’s an opportunity. By plugging in periodically during the day, the state of charge of the battery remains relatively high and reduces or eliminates the need to get the battery to 100 percent at night. But in opportunity charge mode, the battery’s state of charge doesn’t get above 80 percent. Then two bad things happen: First, the electrolyte begins to “stratify.” The acid sinks to the bottom and the water rises to the top. Second, the battery begins to sulphate. The acid that went into the plates during discharge... -
Chilling Bagram 747 Video Hints At Accident's Cause
By John Goglia - Tuesday May 7, 2013Of course the facts are not all in and the accident investigation will take many months, but as a long-time accident investigator the video certainly hints of an aircraft stall that could have been caused by a sudden shift in the cargo load. In this case, we know from media reports that the cargo included heavy vehicles that would make a shift in load particularly significant. A stall at such a low altitude on takeoff is almost impossible for any flight crew to recover from. And we saw the tragic consequences with all seven people on board killed. A sudden shift in cargo can mean several things. Either the cargo was improperly loaded, improperly secured, the restraints broke or any combination of the above. As with most jobs in... -
L.I.D. Template for Meetings
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 1, 2013Too often, management meetings tilt too far in one area – for example the ‘information dump’. Many meeting audits show senior managers spending up to 80% of meeting time listening to presentations, with little time left for real dialogue and sometimes even less for new learning. A format that could be useful for regular management meetings is LID: L – Learning I – Information D- Dialogue To gain a more balanced agenda for meetings, 1/3 of the meeting should be set aside for each of the above objectives: 1/3 for Learning; 1/3 for information; and 1/3 for dialogue. The discipline of the three equal parts ensures that planning is a broad participatory process, not driven solely by individual agendas. Participatory... -
Mea Culpa!
By Ralph Hood - Wednesday May 1, 2013I don’t want to write this blog, but must. I goofed badly on my last Ground Clutter column in Airport Business magazine. Toward the end of the column I mentioned a situation in Glynn County, Georgia. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I thought—and wrote—that the activity took place at McKinnon Airport on St. Simons Island. Sadly, that was all wrong. The activity discussed took place on Brunswick-Golden Isles Airport on the mainland. Not only that—the major part of the column was about Women in Aviation International, better known as WAI. Somehow that came out as WIA. My head hangs low and I do apologize. Now, on to happier thoughts… One of the things I like most about my job is speaking for aviation... -
The Other Side To The Swissport Ukraine Saga
By Steve Smith - Tuesday April 30, 2013
There were two press conferences recently with Swissport and Ukraine International Airlines telling their respective sides of recent court action in Ukraine that ruled in favor of UIA. Up until that time, we heard more from Swissport than we did from UIA. We'll have more in our May issue on the story. In the meantime, here's a Q&A we conducted with Evgeniya Satskaya, UIA's corporate press secretary. Q: I understand that UIA went to court based on a mere discussion of a further capital investment that would result in the dissolution of UIA’s holding. A: It was not a discussion. On March 6th 2012 SPI held the GSM where SPI voted in favor of dilution of UIA’s shareholding in SPU, that was the default under the Participant's... -
The Regional Airline Industry
By Ronald Donner - Thursday April 25, 2013Nearly 50 percent of the nation’s commercial airline schedule today is operated by Regional Airlines. One of every five domestic airline passengers will travel on one of the 2,700 regional aircraft that serve around 658 cities across the U.S. In 470 of those cities regional airlines provide the only scheduled service. Regional Airlines make about 13,000 flights a day carrying about 160 million passengers a year. Looking after their best collective interesst is the Regional Airline Association (RAA), a business association headquartered in Washington, D.C. RAA represents members’ interests in Congressional hearings and before the Department of Transportation, the FAA and other agencies. Back a few decades these airlines were known as... -
How to Make A Company Great!
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 24, 2013What does it take to be a truly GREAT Company? In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, researchers presented their findings for a two year study that identified top-performing companies*. Their data came from 25,000 companies that have traded on U.S. exchanges anytime from 1966 to 2010. They not only identified top performers, but tried to find common reasons why these companies held their status for so long. The top companies were put into three categories: Miracle Worker , Long Runner and Average Joe according to their competitive positioning. There were a total of 174 Miracle Workers . Miracle Workers were companies that fell in the top 10% of ROA (return on assets) for a significant amount of time. Long Runners... -
Readers Sound Off About High Turnover
By Steve Smith - Tuesday April 23, 2013Earlier this month, John Goglia asked a simple question in a blog after he read the news about a deicing incident in Canada: Is high turnover on the ramp causing simple errors? We posted John’s blog on several LinkedIn groups, including our own, and received almost 20 responses. Have a look at a handful of responses: “ Without a shadow of doubt , yes!! In the last 20 years I have seen a shift from Full-Time employment to that of Part-Time Employment. Thus, what was once seen as a career working on the Apron and climbing the ladder. We now see the role as nothing more than a ‘job’, and one that has to be supplemented by another Part-Time job in another industry just to make ends meet. Combine this with a sever lack of... -
FBO Management Course
By John Goglia - Monday April 22, 2013
As you may remember, several months ago I asked for Ground Support Worldwide readers’ help in preparing an FBO management program . As president of the Independent Fixed Base Operators Association, I had heard over and over from our members of the difficulty to recruit supervisors and managers with the knowledge and skills necessary to supervise and manage an FBO operation. To that end, we asked Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in NY – where I am an adjunct professor - to develop FBO courses that would lead to a certificate in FBO management. A number of you responded to my request for help by posting comments on this Web site or on LinkedIn or emailing me directly. All were very helpful, some particularly... -
Givers and Takers: Part II
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 17, 2013Last week’s article expressed the importance of recognizing that every organization’s success depends on the generosity of its employees. Every organization has employees that make decisions every day about whether to be givers or takers. To continue this topic, we return to the study done by Stanford University on givers and takers in organizations. The least productive workers in this study were givers —workers who had done many more favors for others than they had received. But when Flynn turned his spotlight on the top-producing workers, he found that they, too, were givers who did more favors than they received. Those in the middle were the takers . The successful givers produced 50% more annual revenue, on...