Ground Support Blog

It amazes me as I travel the country and the world to see how many ramp workers ignore basic safety protections. Take ear protection as an example. I don’t know any airport workers over 50 who don’t have some hearing loss. Many have significant hearing loss in one or both ears — me included. All those years of engines and APUs running within feet of your head take a toll on your hearing if you don’t wear ear protection religiously.

And I didn’t get religion until the damage was already done. Then I started carrying the ear protectors with me everywhere I went when I was on the job. Because I found that if I didn’t have them on me, the ramp could go from quiet to noisy all of a sudden and I was left with unprotected ears. In that short amount of time, over days, weeks, months and years, the damage gets done. And it’s not reversible.

So now it really pains me to see so many of our young workers without ear protection on the ramp. Many of them, probably like me, either forgot to bring their ear protection with them or think the exposure is only momentary; there’s no sudden pain or blood spouting to warn of injury. By the time you realize that you have hearing loss, it’s usually too late. Damage does occur from incremental exposure.

So we need to be role models for young workers by wearing ear protection ourselves, always. And we also need to remind them when they’re on the ramp without it. As their supervisors we need to make compliance with safety procedures mandatory. Aside from the health of our workforce, these safety measures reduce workers’ comp claims and improve our bottom lines. Not a bad combination.

The jury’s no longer out on whether GSE needs to go electric.  Studies done by a wide-range of groups — from the Department of Energy to private companies — all show that electric is cheaper in the long-run, especially when the cost of fuel goes up, and electric vehicles are cheaper to maintain.  (And for cold weather operations, electric has a clear advantage.)  The environmental benefits are also beyond dispute at this point — the carbon footprint of electric GSE is significantly smaller than for gas- or diesel-powered vehicles. The big issues are infrastructure and paying for new equipment or converting old equipment.

So two things need to happen — the airports need to update their infrastructure to support electric GSE and GSE operators need to find the money to invest in new equipment or conversion of old equipment. GSE operators are not alone in wanting to go electric on the ramp. Airlines and airport operators will be under increasing pressure to reduce their carbon footprints.  One way to do that will be to reduce their emissions on the ground. So they are going to be pushing ground handlers to convert their vehicles so that they can get the credit for the resulting reduction in emissions.

Ground handling companies may end up getting squeezed to make investments in new or converted vehicles, even when it is not economically an opportune time. But before that happens, companies need to look into what opportunities there are for government grants. And while I haven’t seen any public utilities giving grants for GSE, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be pursuaded to do so. For example, the recently passed stimulus bill has $6.9 billion for state block grants for energy efficiency improvements and reduction of carbon emissions. Each state can spend this money broadly on projects covered by the legislation. GSE operators need to meet with their airport operators to see whether some of that money could be used for infrastructure improvements at their airports and purchases of electric GSE or GSE conversions. The Department of Energy and EPA have or have had grants for energy efficiency improvements which should be explored. The FAA’s  Airport Improvement Program grants may now or in the future be available for carbon reduction projects. While the focus may have been on delivery fleets and shuttle buses in the past, this doesn’t mean that airport operators can’t make the case for electric GSE at their airports.

I know that a number of airports hire dedicated personnel to pursue grant opportunities. GSE  operators need to make sure that their needs are covered in the pursuit of such grants.

Preventive maintenance is never easy to budget for — in time or money. We’re always too busy fixing broken equipment that we never get around to doing the preventive maintenance which, of course, eventually results in even more broken equipment. Stopping this cycle is difficult in the best of times but clearly a much greater challenge today. These may not be the worst of times, but I can’t think of any worse times for aviation in my lifetime.

But we need to break this cycle, if for no other reason than it really costs more in the end.  Tightening the fan belt today could keep it from breaking and having to be replaced tomorrow. We all know this but that doesn’t make it any easier when we’re just trying to make it from day-to-day. I know, you’re thinking who’s going to tell the ramp sup his critical piece of equipment isn’t available because of some PM check? But you miss this PM check and then you miss the next one and pretty soon, you have a broken piece of equipment to contend with. Not a good scenario.

Back when I was responsible for ground equipment, I got caught in that same cycle of putting off preventive maintenance for one reason or another and then ending up with broken and unusable equipment. We finally decided that we had to bite the bullet and stop this cycle, because it was costing us more time and money in the end.

So we decided that we would give the ramp sup a schedule of PM items and tell him he needed to do what it took to temporarily replace that equipment — rent, borrow or steal (OK, not steal) — because the checks needed to get done. And we were going to stick to our plan no matter what. It wasn’t easy, but after a few months we noticed a difference in the number of breakdowns.

We all know this but we’re pushed by the constant pressure to keep things moving. I know it’s tough to “just say no,” as a former first lady used to say, but sometimes we really do just have to pause and do the right thing for the long term.