Specialist training consultancy RTITB Airside has released a whitepaper exploring the challenges facing the ground handling industry and providing suggestions on how to overcome them.
The main areas the paper looked at were profitability and talent recruitment and retention, with problems identified in the way airlines, airports and ground handlers dealt with these issues.
“While researching this whitepaper, we spoke with airside businesses, many of whom claimed that the things that most affect their profitability were outside of their sphere of influence,” said Laura Nelson, managing director for RTITB Airside.
“However, our work in the industry has shown that one simple tool – training – can be used by employers to make measurable improvements in profitability.”
The paper explained how ground handling companies can control different elements of their business, such as assets (people or equipment), efficiency of processes and the likelihood and frequency of accidents involving ground support equipment (GSE).
Employers can achieve this through standardised training, said the paper, and can also offer professional development and a clear career path to make ground handling a more attractive prospect.
Reports suggest that training budgets in our industry continue to grow so there is clearly an increasing awareness that training is helpful and important,” said Nelson.
“However, employers must remember that to make a real difference, training needs to be engaging, specific, relevant and high quality.”
