The move towards a global approach to the regulation of ground services at airports has taken a big step forward
The Airport Services Association (ASA) and major handlers have welcomed proposals from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to regulate ground handling across European Union airports.
It is hoped that the regulatory move will begin in Europe and later develop into a global approach if taken up by ICAO.
This is the first time the EU has sought to regulate the continent’s ground services industry “to increase the safety, cybersecurity, and consistency of all the actions that happen on the ground before and after a flight, delivering benefits to passengers and their airlines”, said EASA in its mid-January announcement.
“Until now, this major area of aviation has been largely self-regulated. In most cases, operational arrangements, including those impacting safety, are captured only in bilateral service agreements between ground handling service providers and the aircraft operators to whom they provide services,” said EASA.
But noting that aviation safety starts on the ground, EASA Acting Executive Director Luc Tytgat said: “This entirely new proposal fills an important gap in the overall regulation of aviation operations in the European Union, which means that we will now have an end-to-end approach to ensuring aviation safety and cyber security.
“For passengers and their airlines this will provide increased certainty that ground handling operations are being carried out safely and consistently in all major airports across the EASA Member States.”
Speaking on The Aviation Briefing, EVA International’s newly launched podcast, Fabio Gamba, director general of ASA, said: “This puts us on a par with the airport and aerodrome operators.
“We’re always the ones sandwiched between the two [sets of] regulations of airports and airline operators – and are always told to do things ‘this or that way’,” he noted.
At present, the predominant “standards” for the services industry are IATA’s Airport Handling Manual and Ground Operations Manual. However, while these are good documents with sound guidelines and policies, they are voluntary and are not universally applied or adopted by airlines, said Gamba.
“Unfortunately, I think we have recognised that the industry, to a certain extent, failed to create its own standards [up until now]. Despite the fact that there are standards out there that are being recognised, [the industry has] failed to implement them,” he said.
“We see [EASA’s] regulations as putting an end [to this].”
Efficient approach
EASA’s proposal seeks “an efficient approach on the oversight of ground handling organisations by competent authorities. This is expected to avoid multiple verifications of the same activities and organisational aspects and gradually reduce the significant number of audits performed mostly by aircraft operators,” said the agency.
“This way, organisations should be able to better allocate their resources from auditing to managing the safety of their operations. As now, aircraft operators will retain overall responsibility for aircraft safety and flight safety,” said EASA.
“Today, a large ground handling organisation operating at 100 stations may be subject to over 600 audits from external stakeholders in a year, entailing almost 5,000 hours of work,” said Tytgat.
“In future, air operators will be able to rely on the results of oversight performed only once by the competent authority and reduce their own audits only to the necessary additional aspects. This will reduce costs and free up resources to focus on more critical operations.”
As EASA noted, ground handling processes grew organically as commercial aviation grew, without a central regulation. While ground handling plays a huge role in ensuring the safety of flights, it can also create safety issues.
Most of the vehicles that move around on the airport apron, for example, are also part of the ground handling function – moving passengers or baggage, placing stairs next to aircraft, or helping the aircraft itself to leave the parking stand.
The new ground handling regulation would require ground handling organisations and self-handling aircraft operators performing commercial air transport operations with aeroplanes to self-declare that they comply with the EU requirements.
This can be done either by applying operational procedures they have developed themselves, or by implementing industry standards and good practices developed and continually improved by industry during the past few decades.
Organisations will need to prove that they have a management system in place, proportionately aligned to the complexity of their operations. This includes a safety management system, training for staff, a maintenance programme for ground support equipment and defined operational procedures together with a robust safety culture, where any safety issues are reported without penalty to the reporter, swiftly addressed, and used as a lesson to further improve safety in the provision of services.
The ground handling regulation is expected to be published in late 2024 or early 2025, after which there will be a transition period of three years for implementation.
Welcome move
According to Steve Allen, CEO of dnata Group: “dnata fully supports EASA’s proposal which marks a significant milestone in European aviation. All industry stakeholders will benefit from the implementation of minimum standards for quality and safety. This initiative also aligns with our ongoing efforts to deliver consistent world-class services at every airport across our operations.”
Warwick Brady, President and CEO of Swissport, said: “The regulations will ensure a better standard of operations and will help reinforce the critical role that ground handling plays in aviation safety. Together with EASA and ASA, we must make sure the regulations provide a level playing field for ground handlers to deliver safe and sustainable operations that support the wider ESG agenda of the aviation industry.”
“We now encourage other national authorities to implement the same requirements to deliver a truly global set of standards,” said Warwick.
This ambition will be furthered this year: ICAO is expected to recognise ASA as an international association, giving it greater access to ICAO’s working groups and the ICAO Council.
One of ASA’s missions will be to promote the global adoption of the EASA regulation, which is described as one with a “light touch”, or one that doesn’t require the operator to undertake extensive additional actions if compliant, that has been worked on by ASA, ACI and IATA.
