Ground Support Worldwide - 23

INTERNATIONAL

Photo courtesy of dnata

The quality and compliance system at
Swissport is benchmarked against legislative and regulatory compliance, including
the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA)
in Australia and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in New Zealand, along with also
being mapped to International Air Transport Association (IATA) standards.
"Where other international regulatory
bodies, such as the FAA in the United States
or CAA in the United Kingdom have more
detailed recommendations or requirements,
we consider or implement those recommendations in our own system," says Ryan.
"At dnata we continually improve our
processes to provide the best possible services to our customers. We focus on the
standardization of processes together with
effective assurance. Evidence of our standardized global processes can be seen via
the dnata Corporate Governance Manual
(dCGM), the dnata Integrated Management
System (IMS) and also the dnata Ground
Operations Manual (dGOM)," adds Lee
Hogan, manager of global risk and assurance
at dnata. "Together with our standardized
processes, we have also aligned our assurance programs to demonstrate that 'we
do what we say we do,' and to ensure that
we have effective risk management. This
approach is consistent with other high risk
or safety critical industries."

Requirements
There are specific requirements of aircraft
ground handling companies when implementing quality and compliance systems.
In Australia and New Zealand, ground handling companies are not directly legislated
by the aviation regulators. However, over
many years of collaboration, CASA has
introduced the Ground Operations Safety
Advisory Forum (GO-SAFE) meetings
where all stakeholders work together to
improve safety in aviation, observes Ryan.
"As a contractor to an airline, we must
meet the requirements of the airline and be
able to demonstrate implementation, which
is completed by audits on the operation and
business," he explains. "The specific features of such systems in aircraft ground
handling companies are planning, policies,
procedures and processes, training, leadership or supervision, reporting and just
culture, monitoring and quality assurance
and continual improvement."
At dnata, as part of its standardization
process, the dnata Global Standards and the
dnata Ground Operations Manual provide
all of its global operations with a common
framework and approach.
"The aim is to ensure consistent quality
delivery of our products and services. These
global standards also meet the requirements of applicable regulatory and industry standards," says Hogan. "Our assurance

VTS EXTENDS
SERVICES TO
GROUND HANDLING
Vanuatu Terminal Services (VTS)
is a subsidiary of Airports Vanuatu
Limited, operator of airports in
Vanuatu - an archipelago in the
South Pacific Ocean.
While VTS' core responsibility
has been to manage a cargo
warehouse, it has expanded its
arms and is now providing ramp
services. So far, VTS handles only
Virgin Australia flights, some itinerant flights and military aircraft
on request.
Other aircraft are handled by Air
Vanuatu Limited, which has its
own ground handling department.
"Our scale of operations is small
but this year one of VTS' objectives is to work on achieving the
ISAGO standard. We have two
ground handling agencies providing services at Bauerfield airport:
Air Vanuatu Limited and VTS,"
affirms Alex Henry of VTS.
"VTS ground handling personnel
ensure to comply with all rules
applicable to ground handling operations," Henry continues. "Our
ground handling department is
audited annually by auditors from
Virgin Australia and Air New Zealand. Currently, only Bauerfield
airport is servicing international
flights."

OCTOBER 2019

AviationPros.com

http://www.AviationPros.com

Ground Support Worldwide

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