Ground Support Worldwide - 21

GROUND SERVICE
PROVIDERS

in Europe for decades, but the nature of
them has changed as the aviation industry
and airports have evolved recently.
"In the old days, we used to have a fairly
straightforward relationship where an airport used to have airlines and generally
speaking, the airlines did some self-handling. Now they're realizing that they can
get it done cheaper by getting a third party
to do it," Matheson says.
"What that means is that where it used
to be a relationship between airline and airport, you've now got this group of people in
the middle that are delivering services. And
of course, in big airports, it's not just as easy
as just one extra party coming in. It might be
four or five or six new parties coming in," he
continues. "So, it goes from this very binary
relationship to one where all of a sudden we
have quite a community of stakeholders. So,
I go back to the analogy where we're in a
street or where we're in a town, where all of
a sudden, the airport has gone from being a
binary relationship to being a community."
And that's where the AOL comes in and
helps lay out the airport's community guidelines, which are, in this case, less laws and
more standards that an airport expects out
of the parties operating in it, and in turn,
what those parties can expect out of the
airport.
These guidelines are becoming increasingly important to layout as airports continue to grow, change and welcome in more
airlines and operators while, often, being
unbale to physically expand into the land
or area they find themselves in.
An example Matheson uses of how an
AOL can be utilized to meet common airport
goals is through environmental targets.
"An airport can't just say, 'we're going to
reduce our carbon footprint by X amount
within the next 20 years,' if the airport isn't
responsible, for example, for the ground service equipment. They have to include the
community in some of those more strategic
decisions. That's normally done by an AOL
and within there will be certain service level
agreements (SLA) around aiming for electrification or the types of equipment that you
can use." says Matheson.
"If you want to electrify an airport, you
have to put in electric baggage tugs, etc., then
you've got to think about things like, where

do you charge them? Where do you put the
electric supplies?" he adds. "Now, what you
don't want to do is replace lots of equipment
with lots of chargers. So, what you're looking
to do is kind of have a common agreement
as to what the type of charger is, where does
it go, etc., and more importantly, when you
actually have a shared asset, whether it be
pooled ground service equipment, whether
it be chargers, whether it just be shared
parking areas, you need to have behaviors
around that. You need to have people who
know that if you want to use this piece of
equipment, these are the standards."
Seeing the benefit of adopting an AOL,
the Greater Toronto Airports Authority
(GTAA) recently collaborated with Matheson and ASG to help improve the existing
agreement for ground handling operations
at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
"The GTAA has established a new

Ground Service Provider (GSP) License
to Operate (LTO) as a type of AOL. The
GTAA determined the number of LTOs that
we would issue and received applications
from GSPs as part of an RFA process. To
be successful, GSPs need to pass a rigorous
analysis of their performance, as well as
their plans to meet and maintain the expectations of the LTO here at Toronto Pearson.
The LTO lays out a standard for operating
at Pearson, including the local procedures,
management accountability, environmental awareness, ground service equipment
(GSE) age limitations, training programs and
turnover rates, which all GSPs must be able
to meet and maintain," says Larry Shack,
Associate Director, Ground Operations at
the GTAA.
Providing a more seamless and satisfying passenger experience was key to GTAA's
adoption of their LTO. Shack says that

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Ground Support Worldwide

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