Ground_Support_September2020 - 16

COVER STORY

"Starting in April of 2020, volume
dropped 87 percent from April 2019. Since
that time, there has been a slow uptick
each month. Most movements from April
through June were humanitarian operations and medevacs," he says.
LeDuc highlights that some countries
are indeed now opening up to additional
traffic.
"Some of the obvious residual effects of
the reduction of travel are shortages that
may limit catering options available at some
of the more remote airports," he says.
"A number of handlers and fuelers have
had to reduce staff and this can cause service issues," LeDuc adds. "Most airports
are experiencing some sort of reduction
in operating hours."
Aragon also observes that one of the
ways handling companies have compensated for the loss of business traffic was by
pivoting and supporting more cargo operations between locations where traditionally
ground support is not arranged.
"We began supporting more airlines
which were using commercial aircraft to
deliver medical cargo," he says.

The 'New Normal'

commitments; but this is extremely complicated as it requires to have very precise
scheduling. And, normally, the situation is
that airlines are constantly updating their
schedules."
With schedules changing sometimes by
the day, the airport teams have been working closely with airlines on planning for
forthcoming flight schedules.
"Everyone in the industry has had to
become very flexible in order to manage
the significantly reduced workload. Government support schemes have been a lifeline for the industry," says Walker. "With
reduced schedules, many employees have
been placed on furlough, which has prevented the loss of thousands of experienced,
well trained and security cleared staff."
The schedule changes and the related
difficulty at forecasting are due to several
factors, according to Gamba.
"The first one is that there are no means
for member states of ICAO to agree on a
common level and interpretation of epidemiology. So, what a country defines as
being enough for a complete lockdown
would be something that another country
in a similar situation would consider as a
simple epidemic and would not therefore
shut itself down entirely," he explains.
"Another element of uncertainty is due
to the quarantine that has been imposed
Photo courtesy of Menzies Aviation

According to Aragon, aviation has always
had a strong safety culture and, therefore,
adopting new health processes to protect

employees and customers from COVID -
i.e. the 'new normal' - was not difficult.
"The challenge was rather finding a
standard consensus on best practices
among the varying different global organizations and health departments at the
locations we serve," he says. "We were proactive when the pandemic hit and ahead
of the industry as far as adopting health
standards for our network.
"We created our standards by analyzing recommendations from various agencies such as the WHO, CDC, IATA, ICAO
and other local health authorities," Aragon
continues. "We were ahead in many cases
helping the airports develop their own protocols and then submitting them to their
governments for their approval."
When travel restrictions began to be
lifted, the industry was met with new difficulties that it had not faced in the past
- many of which pertained to the speed at
which one could adapt to a restart.
"For instance, when a given airport has
been totally stopped during the lockdown
and it reopens again at a slower pace, then
one needs to be able to follow that return
by having back the people at work, but not
all the previous teams because they would
be too many," says Gamba. "Ground service providers are required to make sure
that they can have the right level of people

16 GROUND SUPPORT WORLDWIDE

SEPTEMBER 2020

Ground_Support_September2020

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