The winds of change are sweeping every facet of our world, including aviation and its ground handling sector. Regional service provider EULEN Aviation is working to position itself for growth in an economy struggling to cut costs.
To find out about the Miami-based outfit’s strategy, we spoke to COO John Jones. Following is an excerpt from that discussion.
GSW: Tell us a little about yourself and your role with Grupo EULEN.
John Jones: I've got just under 30 years of experience in aviation, and I’ve worked on the airline side of the business as well as the ground handling side. I understand the needs of the airline and the strategy of the ground handler to provide services to the airlines.
I retired from Delta just before the pandemic, and was enjoying some travel, but decided I needed to work a little bit more. I started with EULEN Aviation last year and my mission was to improve the service we give to our customers, and also, to help grow our business.
GSW: EULEN is a full-service ground handling organization, correct?
Jones: EULEN Aviation, which is a division of Grupo EULEN, is based in Miami. We have 34 airlines we provide aviation services to in eight US airports and two in Jamaica. We do ramp services, as well as passenger services. We do security and cabin cleaning, and we provide wheelchair service in some airports.
GSW: How do you view the current state of the aviation ground handling sector?
Jones: There are a lot of opportunities in this industry. With everything happening in our economy today, our airline partners are outsourcing a lot of ancillary services.
Some of the challenges we face involve meeting the demands of customers that want a high level of service while keeping our rates low. We’re always looking for the right formula for success, where we're able to offer a safe, high-quality product, but at a lower cost for the customer.
There are a lot of requests for proposals right now in the industry, and a lot of unsolicited bid activity, which has changed. As the airlines are looking to reduce their costs, a lot of ground handlers are going directly to the airlines before the RFP even comes out. They’re saying, “Hey, I can do this work for you in this airport at a 15% reduction of what you're doing today.”
And airlines are listening to that. As long as the ground handling companies can do it and maintain their projected profit margins, it's a great business strategy.
We're not sitting around waiting for the RFP to come to us. We're going after some of these airlines, some of which are our biggest customers. We may be successful in Miami with American Airlines, for example, so we’ll try to procure business from them at other airports. Based on the relationship we already have with them, and the delivery of quality, we're able to win other contracts in other airports as well.
GSW: What do you think is EULEN's “secret sauce,” its unique difference?
Jones: In this industry, attrition is very high, historically. It's a revolving door at some companies.
Grupo EULEN is a Spanish-based company. We have over 82,000 employees globally, across 11 countries. In the US we have our aviation division; the only aviation work we do is based here in Miami, and that makes us unique.
We have a very low attrition rate, we have loyal employees. We have a very robust training department. We want to make sure we deliver a quality product, and we do that through training and by developing our people.
We have a leadership program that we launched this year to help us improve the quality of the leaders we have in our organization. I think that's part of what makes us different. Every ground handler does the same things, but we look for ways to be more efficient, maintaining that high quality of service and focusing on our employee retention plan.
It costs so much to bring an employee into the organization, but once they're here, we need to figure out how to keep them employed with us. We're very successful in Miami, our largest operation, with around 2,500 employees. We have a stable workforce, and that enables us to give the highest level of service to the customer.
GSW: Technology is changing every aspect of our lives, and aviation is no exception. How does it factor into your workforce development?
Jones: Not only do we want to enhance our quality with investments in technology, but our customers want the same thing. We make that investment in two different ways. As far as the workforce goes, we work with software that helps us determine exactly how many employees we need to provide a certain level of service for the airline. The customer feeds us what their staffing standards are. They tell us how many people we need at the check-in, how many we need at the gate, how many on the ramp, how many to clean the airplane, and so on. We're able to come up with an efficient schedule to minimize our cost, and we look for synergies, building our bids with consideration of other contracts we have in the same airport.
We also invest in software which uses GPS to track where our employees are in an airport. Through a dispatcher we can assign them to the closest gate to meet the demands of the customer with the highest level of efficiency.
GSW: From the employee standpoint, is technology changing their work experience?
Jones: With no ambiguity, we're able to clearly tell employees where they’re assigned so they know what their day looks like. It's great for improving our efficiency and productivity, but also our employees have clear instruction. They know what their tasks are.
Obviously, schedules are very dynamic, but with the software that we use, we're able to adjust and quickly reassign employes as needed. I think it gives the employees peace of mind, and it helps our leaders manage the workforce.
GSW: What do you see for the future of Grupo Eulen, and the industry overall?
Jones: The ground handling industry is really driven by the airlines needing to reduce their costs, outsourcing the services that maybe historically, were provided by the airline itself.
There are a lot of ground handling companies out there today, and it’s very competitive. Airlines are out there shopping, and they want to make sure they get the best price and the best quality.
We’re currently in eight airports in the US, Miami being our largest. Once we're established in an airport, our goal is to grow there. We want to look at what other business opportunities there are with other airlines in that airport. And we also are considering growth beyond those eight US airports we’re in, and the two in the Caribbean.
We're also looking to participate in bids that are outside of the airports we're already in. The company wants to grow. We're based on the Eastern seaboard, but we're looking for expansion toward the West.
In communication we have with our business partners, we’ve asked them where they might be having challenges finding a good service provider. We may not be in in Tulsa today, we may not be in St Louis, but if one of our airline partners has trouble finding a quality provider in an airport that we're not in, we'll look at expanding into that market.
GSW: What makes you so passionate about the industry?
Jones: What motivates me are the people. The last employee I met coming off a flight had been with the company for 24 years. To see that loyalty, and then to not only see the loyalty, but appreciate the dedication these employees have. We always try to promote from within, and when we have leadership opportunities, it's great to see these people develop into new roles.
I love visiting our airports and talking to the employees about what works and what doesn't work. I've been in aviation for so long, and not much has changed in what we do, just how we do it today, versus how we did it 20, 30, 40, years ago. It's great to be here and to see what potential we have growing in the industry.
