HiSERV, the Germany-based GSE rental specialist, has begun supporting the needs of ground services provider AeroGround Berlin at the capital’s Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)
According to the partners, the common goal is to “further develop the service for airlines and their customers at BER with state-of-the-art ground support equipment”.
HiSERV will not only provide GSE ranging from baggage carts to de-icers on a rental basis; it will also facilitate fleet management on the apron and maintenance/repair services through its own workshop and a mobile workshop unit that will provide a rapid response capability on the BER ramp.
Eduard Tissen, managing director of AeroGround Berlin, comments: “With HiSERV, we have found an efficient partner who reliably meets our high demands on quality, flexibility and performance.
“Together, we have developed a project over the past few months that fully meets AeroGround Berlin’s needs in terms of both content and cost. Together with our colleagues from HiSERV, AeroGround Berlin carried out an in-depth analysis, at the end of which the co-operation that has now been concluded stands and which will be a key success factor for AeroGround Berlin in the future, both operationally and economically.”
Roland Ückert, HiSERV’s managing director, adds: “We are very pleased to be able to support AeroGround Berlin with our modern equipment and service to provide an outstanding service at Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
“With our support, AeroGround Berlin will be able to further improve the handling quality at BER to be ready for the challenges of summer 2022.”
Ückert tells Airside that the partners had begun working towards this collaboration in summer last year in accordance with BER licence tender arrangements. “We will supply the whole range of GSE from container dollies to pushback tractors,” he says. “As our contract has a lot of in-built flexibility, it is difficult to come up with a price or exact numbers of GSE, but it will be dozens of units.”
And, thanks to HiSERV’s huge maintenance base in Berlin, “All GSE will be fully serviced,” he continues. “Our workshop handles all types of GSE for many customers at BER airport. As a special and unique service, we also have small trucks that are fully equipped with tools and spare parts which enables us to repair GSE right on the apron.”
By March, HiSERV had already started transferring GSE to AeroGround. While Ückert will not reveal the length of the contract, he does confirm that, “We aim to support AeroGround Berlin for the whole licence period.”
It’s been a difficult market, of course, over the last couple of years, but now Ückert says that HiSERV is seeing “huge demand for GSE from our customers, as the outlook for the summer flight period is very positive”.
He adds: “At many airports, summer slots are matching and sometimes even exceeding 2019 levels. This puts a lot of strain on ground handling agents to recruit staff and have sufficient GSE available. As far as GSE is concerned, we help our customers to relieve them of the burden of having too few units of GSE.”
Ückert also points to a growing trend amongst customers for battery-powered GSE. “We can see that the demand for electric GSE is constantly on the rise and we work closely with all GSE suppliers to match this demand,” he concludes.
