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Battery Myth No. 2
By Todd Allen - Tuesday February 26, 2013
TRUE OR FALSE : Cold weather is bad for batteries. FALSE : Batteries like the cold. Lower average battery temperature means longer life expectancy. A typical baggage tractor battery weighs well over 3,000 pounds, which is too much mass to lower the internal temperature over the course of a day or two. Hopefully, the battery is being used and charged, which generates heat and maintains temperature. And even if the internal temperature drops, the electrolyte in a charged battery will not freeze. So in most cases, even freezing temperatures don’t make any difference at all, and possibly they even help. There is some bad news, however: Lower internal battery temperature means lower capacity : A cold battery could deliver as... -
Remembering the Basics
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Tuesday February 19, 2013Service is an area where a business can clearly set itself apart from the competition -- even in aviation … especially in aviation. By providing truly exceptional customer service to customers, organizations are realizing that they can increase their value in the eyes of those customers. There are now metrics and complicated standard operating procedures to measure and ensure the best possible service. But, in the words of Leonardo DaVinci, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” It is a good time to revisit the basics -- what brought us to where we are today. Customer service has been a formal cornerstone of competitiveness for well over 30 years. Though the nuances of how customer service may be delivered across... -
Ground Workers Strike Over Job, Pay Cuts In Spain
By Steve Smith - Tuesday February 19, 2013
We were out yesterday on account of President’s Day. But what a lousy way to spend a day off. First, sitting in a dentist’s chair at 8 a.m. with my jaws wrenched open followed later that afternoon sitting in a lawyer’s office for two hours with at least one jaw continually hitting the ground. Good thing we didn’t have a ticket to fly on Spain’s flag carrier, Iberia. Yesterday began 15 days of strikes for this month and next. Monday’s protest also turned violent when police and striking ground workers and flight attendants clashed with police inside the Madrid-Barajas Airport. A total of 70,000 Iberia passengers are expected to be affected by the strike this week. The airline’s pilots are expected to join the strikes next... -
View From The Ramp: Taipei’s International Airport
By John Goglia - Tuesday February 19, 2013
It has been many years since I last visited Taiwan – so many in fact that it was principally known as Formosa way back when I last landed there more than 40 years ago. At the time I was working for a cargo carrier with contracts all over the world – particularly in far-flung places where the major freight haulers preferred not to go. And for good reason. Many of those remote airports were in what were then called third-world countries, with politically unstable governments and inadequate and even unsafe airport facilities. That was largely true of Taiwan’s airport way back then. In those days, not only was the airport itself in disrepair but the best that could be said of any of the ramp equipment was that it was worn and... -
William O'Brien Trophy for Aviation Tech Excellence
By Ronald Donner - Thursday February 14, 2013
The AMTSociety has enjoyed a long and successful relationship with Snap-on. For those of you that have attended the AMTSociety Maintenance Skills Competition, held in conjunction with Aviation Pros LIVE (former Cygnus Aviation Expo) you have seen the Snap-on presence. This year at Aviation Pros LIVE’13 held March 13 and 14 in Las Vegas, NE, the William O'Brien Trophy for Aviation Tech Excellence will be presented by Snap-on, and will be bestowed to the team with the overall winning score from the Maintenance Skills Competition. This prestigious award will be on display in the winning team’s facility for a year. The late William O’Brien was a popular figure in the FAA, advocating for the profession, safety, and professionalism... -
Let's Talk About RBS. And Pre-Check. And Opt-Out. Again.
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday February 13, 2013On the face of it, TSA’s Risk Based Security (RBS) seems like a pretty good idea: use your limited resources to address real identifiable risk, which in the physical security world is most often defined as threat-times-vulnerability. There are certainly plenty of airport vulnerabilities to go around, but the operative question is vulnerable to what? Defining the threat is always a fast-moving, fast-morphing target which is a continuing challenge for static policies and procedures using static technologies. Pre-check is a child of RBS: use the U.S.’ massive intelligence capabilities to check up on you, your family and friends, and if you’re not a terrorist threat, you get a quick once-over instead of the full screening... -
The Connection Between Customer Loyalty and Customer Complaints
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Tuesday February 12, 2013
Companies that receive a steady stream of customer complaints surely risk losing customers if there is no genuine attempt to first listen to the complaint and then take steps toward a resolution. In fact, some studies suggest that over 90 percent of customers who are upset and have a complaint will never buy products or services from the offending company again. The good news, though, is that nearly 75 percent of these customers can be won back if there is a process in place that makes them feel like their concerns are being heard — and that someone is taking steps to resolve their problems. Customers’ complaints may not even be solved in exactly the way they originally envisioned, but if they know that the service provider... -
Future Airline Markets
By Ralph Hood - Tuesday February 12, 2013
Airlines seem to have made up their collective minds — at last — that there is no sense in flying people places for a price that produces less than the cost of the flight. This makes sense. At the same time, mergers do seem to be on the rise. What will this do to competition? One side says that — woe is us — it will put the market into too few hands and pax will be forced to pay “excessive” (whatever that means) prices. That side tends to think govmint may have to interfere with the market — in other words, reregulate the market — in order to keep prices “fair.” Let’s not forget that there is another side that really does believe in the free market. Count me among that group. Adam Smith — who wrote the book... -
How The Halvorsen Loader Got Its Name
By Steve Smith - Tuesday February 12, 2013
We put the finishing touches on our February issue last week that celebrates our 20 th year publishing the leading voice of the ground support community. Our cover story is on the history of ground support equipment, which can trace its ancestry all the way back to 1705 when the Goldhofer family started a blacksmith’s shop. Ironically, the professional management of that company was in the news last week, too, when it announced the acquisition of Schopf - by comparison a teenager that got its start in 1945 when Jorg Schopf opened a design office to develop shovel loaders. We tried our best to celebrate the names behind the brand names throughout the 4,000-word feature. You’ve no doubt heard of Hobart Brothers, the company. But... -
Coming Attractions: Aviation PROs Live
By Steve Smith - Tuesday February 5, 2013We're putting the finishing touches on our upcoming AviationPros LIVE show, March 13-14, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We are very pleased to partner with Boyd Group International for next month’s event. Michael Boyd, chairman of Boyd Group International, will outline the major issues facing aviation today and provide insight into the best and worst outcomes for the key concerns. In addition to providing the keynote address at the show, Boyd will hold two educational sessions titled The New Skyscape and Navigating The New Future . Both of these sessions are promised to provide insight valuable to all aviation segments; general aviation, airlines, airports, and FBOs. Ground Support Worldwide will host two seminars each on...