March 2015 News

March 19, 2015

April 13-15

Milan, Italy

IATA 28th Ground Handling Conference

April 26-29

Istanbul, Turkey

AAAE 87th Annual Conference & Expo

June 7-10

Philadelphia, PA

inter airport Europe

October 8-11

Munich, Germany

NBAA Business Aviation Conference & Exposition

November 17-19

Las Vegas, NV


March 2015 News

BUSINESS BUZZ

Air India SATS Airport Services received the IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations certification for adhering to high safety standards at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport and at its headquarters in Mumbai. 

TLD launched its new cargo tractor, the JCT-40/60. The JCT is designed for baggage handling tasks as well as towing of heavy cargo. Thanks to its high drawbar pull (up to 4500 daN) it can also be used to push back small/medium aircraft.

Aviator Airport Services Finland, a provider of ground handling services at Helsinki Airport, plans to layoff 100 employees. Currently, Aviator provides employment to roughly 370 people. The move comes after Aviator lost a contract with Norwegian to Airpro, a service provider owned by Finavia.

SATS, Changi Airport's biggest ground-handling agent, recovered around 17,000 items left on planes last year. This is more than 11/2 times the 11,000 items found a year ago.The number of lost and found items has gone up despite modest growth of just 0.7 percent in overall passenger numbers at the airport between 2013 and last year

An Israeli-made robotic airplane tow vehicle made its debut at Frankfurt Airport. The TaxiBot was designed to ferry the most commonly used passenger airplane, the Boeing 737, from its terminal or parking, to the runway. A memorandum of understanding was signed between IAI and Lufthansa to develop a larger model of the Taxibot to be able to support bigger aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and Airbus A380. Taxibot has garnered the attention of other aviation companies as well. IAI and French avitation support equipment company TLD signed a memorandum of understanding late in 2014 with Air France to assess whether Taxibot is applicable to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. IAI began developing Taxibot in 2007 alongside TLD and Lufthansa-LEOS. Airbus and Boeing have also actively supported the project.

TLD’s Wuxi, China, factory, which was built in 2011 to accommodate the company’s expansion in the Asian market, will began undergo an expansion itself. When completed, the current space will essentially double to 20,000 square meters.

John Bean Technologies Corporation, reported revenue of $984.2 million in 2014, an increase of 5.4 percent versus 2013. Segment operating profit increased 12.5 percent.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said that last year airlines recording the lowest number of tarmac delays longer than three hours on record. There were 30 domestic flights with tarmac delays longer than three hours and nine international flights with tarmac delays longer than four hours at U.S. airports. In 2009, the last full year before the department’s domestic tarmac rule went into effect, airlines reported 868 domestic flights with tarmac delays longer than three hours.

United Airlines announced a tentative agreement with a union to outsource about 1,150 airport jobs while sparing another 800 positions. The airline said that it plans to hire contractors to provide the work at 16 airports but will continue to use United employees for some or all of the work at 12 others. The airline plans to outsource all airport jobs at these locations:

  • Anchorage
  • Hartford
  • Nashville
  • Boise
  • Spokane
  • Greensboro
  • Jacksonville
  • Miami
  • West Palm Beach
  • McAllen
  • Oklahoma City
  • Omaha
  • Ontario, California
  • Norfolk
  • Richmond
  • Providence

Under the agreements, all the airport jobs would remain in-house at these locations:

  • Billings
  • Indianapolis
  • Reno
  • San Antonio
  • San Jose
  • Tulsa

Some jobs would be outsourced at:

  • Atlanta
  • Fort Myers
  • Kansas City
  • Raleigh-Durham
  • Sacramento
  • St. Louis

Delta Air Lines employees received profit sharing as part of the company's $1.1 billion total payout for 2014 – the largest payment in the company's history. Total individual payouts will equal more than 16 percent of employees' eligible 2014 earnings, which equates to an average of nearly two months' salary.

Checked baggage fees are paying off for Canada’s two major airlines. Air Canada’s ancillary revenues per passenger grew 18 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago, largely due to the charge on the first checked bags, introduced in November, for routes in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. WestJet Airlines, meanwhile, recently boosted its forecasted take from the fees by 11 percent to $100 million.

NEW DEALS

Swissport International Ltd. And Airport Management Group LLP, signed a memorandum of understanding, in which the parties agreed that Swissport will take over the complete ground handling from Kazakhstan's Astana International Airport in in two phases. The cooperation will commence in May with the newly established joint venture “Swissport Kazakhstan” taking over passenger handling. In a second phase, the joint venture will take over the entire ground handling services by the end of the year, including ramp and deicing services.

Havaş Saudi Arabia, the first Turkish company with a ground handling services license in Saudi Arabia, has begun providing its services in Medina as part of Pegasus Airlines’ Umrah operations.

Menzies Aviation has began handling South Africa's first low-cost carrier. Skywise Airlines launched its inaugural flight in February. Skywise plans to expand operations to three major airports in South Africa within the next six months.

Fraport Cargo Services will take over the cargo handling for China Southern Cargo at Frankfurt Airport. Five weekly freighter turnarounds will fly between Guangzhou and Frankfurt. China Southern also serves the Shanghai-Frankfurt route six times per week. Fraport Cargo Services expects to handle an annual volume of 70,000 metric tons for China Southern in the future.

Cavotec has been awarded orders for its Sub-freezing DX-Boost PCA technology at the Presidential Flight Hangar at Abu Dhabi International Airport, and at the Oman Air MRO facility at Muscat International Airport.

UAS International Trip Support and EPIC Aviation formed a strategic alliance that will create opportunities for growth for both companies and deliver added value to their customers. EPIC Cardholders, who currently have access to more than 5,000 EPIC FBOs and merchants, will realize even greater access when operating internationally through the UAS network of 3,000 locations and regional operations teams. They will be able to purchase discounted fuel on credit using their existing EPIC Card account. UAS customers will now have priority access at all EPIC locations in North America, providing value for the trip support giant who completed over 100,000 movements in 2014.

Landmark Aviation has acquired Ellington Partners, LP and Southwest Airport Services at Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas. With an existing location at George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport, this will be Landmark Aviation’s second FBO in the Houston area. In other news, Shell Aviation announced its expansion with the addition of six Landmark Aviation locations in Coatesville, PA; Denver, CO; Laredo, TX; Midland, TX; Thermal, CA; and Santa Fe, NM, which were recently acquired by Landmark from Ross Aviation. There are currently nearly 500 Shell Branded FBOs in the United States.

Delta Air Lines has started testing an on-time guarantee for checked baggage. The trial, which runs through March 31, guarantees that fliers' checked bags will arrive at the baggage carousel within 20 minutes when traveling on domestic flights. Delta will give 2,500 miles to customers' whose bags take longer than that to reach the carousel.

Memphis International Airport will outfit airfield maintenance vehicles and equipment with transponders from Exelis Inc. so they can be tracked on air traffic control radar.

AAR sold its Telair Cargo Group to TransDigm for $725 million in cash, subject to adjustments. The Telair Cargo Group is comprised of Telair International, Telair U.S., and Nordisk Aviation Products. AAR also announced its intention to sell its unprofitable Precision Systems Manufacturing business and will report it as a discontinued operation and record an impairment charge of approximately $40 million in the third quarter of of its fiscal 2015.

PEOPLE

Ibrahim Mohamed drives an electric cart for Airserv at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, earning $8 an hour, transporting elderly and disabled passengers around the main terminal. Last month, the Somali immigrant added a second job: taking his seat on the Metropolitan Airports Commission, the governing body that operates MSP. Mohamed was appointed a commissioner by Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and will be the only current airport worker to serve on the 14-member governing board. An 11-year MSP employee, Mohamed is looking forward to serving as a voice for workers. That includes contractor employees, some of whom earn the minimum wage with few benefits -- all part of his vision of making MSP "one of the best airports in the world."

Changi Airport Group conferred its highest honors to its staff during its Annual Airport Celebration ceremony. Among the 24 awards presented was Mohd Jumatdi Bin Ayub, who received the 2014 "Service Personality of the Year" award. Bin Ayub, a supervisor with Changi Airport’s ground-handling agent, dnata Singapore, came upon several unclaimed baggage at the Arrival Services office in May last year. Curious as to whom they belonged to, he followed-up with a check with the airline and learned that an elderly Indonesian couple had been offloaded from their flight to Jeddah after the husband had suffered a stroke en-route from Surabaya and was later conveyed to Changi General Hospital. Concerned over the couple’s welfare, Jumatdi made the effort to obtain the passengers’ contact information and whereabouts, and delivered their baggage to them immediately. Besides making repeated visits to the hospital, getting in touch with the couple’s son in Surabaya and offering himself as the point of contact for the elderly couple, Bin Ayub also became the family’s pillar of support over their three-week stay in Singapore. He eventually coordinated with the airline, tour agent, the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority as well as the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore to help make the necessary arrangements for the couple’s return flight home. Later, he personally drove the family to the airport after Karnadi was discharged and saw that they got onto their flight safely.