Ground Handling

Kasper Østergaard Helsted, Jens Hegner Stærmose, Christoffer Carlé ChristensenChristian Heider Nielsen, Kasper Fuglsang Christensen

Anders Lykke Matthiassen & Josias Laugesen

21 - 05 - 2014

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Cache invalidation, naming and off-by-one errors.

Institute of Computer ScienceStrandvejen 12-14, 9000 AalborgTelephone 96 35 97 31Fax 98 13 63 93http://tnb.aau.dk

Title:Ground Handling

Project Period:Spring Semester 2014

Project Group:SW2-A418

Participants:Kasper Østergaard HelstedJens Hegner StærmoseChristoffer Carlé ChristensenChristian Heider NielsenKasper Fuglsang ChristensenAnders Lykke MatthiassenJosias Laugesen

Supervisor:Ramin Sadre

Copies:10

Page Numbers:65

Appendix:None

Number and Type of Annexes:14 pages, code

Date of Completion:21-05-2014

Abstract:

Synopsis

The content of this report is freely accessible, but publication (with referencing) may only happen under agreementwith the authors.

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For the sake of not being totally useless, here is a joke to lighten the mood.Q: How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: None, that’s a hardware problem.

Preface

Contents

I Problem Analysis 1

1 Introduction 2

2 The Ground Handling Process 32.1 Ground Handling in General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2.1.1 Delimitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.2 Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.2.1 Catering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62.2.2 Cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.2.3 De-icing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.2.4 Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72.2.5 Freight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.2.6 Fuel service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.2.7 Air plane Mechanic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102.2.8 Passenger bridges/stairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.2.9 Push back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.2.10 Missing: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.2.11 Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3 Stakeholders 133.1 Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.1.1 Ground Handling Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133.1.2 Airports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2 Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173.2.1 Supervisors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.3 Passengers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.3.1 Cabin Crew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4 Planning 204.1 State of the Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.1.1 Peakhours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.2 Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214.3 Conclusion on motivation and stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224.4 How to avoid bad planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224.5 Safety and Incident Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.5.1 Incidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234.5.2 Contributing factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244.5.3 Personal Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264.5.4 Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264.5.5 Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274.5.6 Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284.5.7 Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284.5.8 Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

4.5.9 Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294.5.10 Technical factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.6 Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304.7 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324.8 Consequences of Bad Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5 Problem Statement 355.1 Problem Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

6 TEMP 36

II Product Development 38

7 Future 397.1 Future Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Part I

Problem Analysis

INTRODUCTION

1. IntroductionIn this part of the report we will take a good look at ground handling in general, and whatproblems is currently present in the industry. Ground handling, being the entire work related tothe plane from landing to take off, is a very complicated process, which in some cases requiresvery good timing. For example in Aalborg Airport they operate with what they call peak-hours.Being the time between 6-10 in the morning and 16-20 in the evening. During this period thehandling can easily become chaotic, and any number of different problems might arise, such asunscheduled flights, some jobs taking longer than what was expected or simple logistical errorsthat means that the right equipment is not on site at the right time.

We will look into all the different parts of ground handling that might be relevant, and in the endwe will, by using this analysis, make a problem statement, focusing on a few of the problemsrelevant to our project.

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS

2. The Ground Handling Process

2.1 Ground Handling in General

This report will primarily focus on ground handling, but what exactly is ground handling?

Ground handling is the work done to an aircraft from the time it lands until it takes off again(the handling of aircrafts on the ground). The actual ground handling consists of many differentkinds of work; some ground handlers (un)load baggage, some clean the cabin and some fuel theaircraft amongst other important duties. The specific work done in a ground handling contextwill be described later in the report.

These ground handling duties are typically performed by ground handlers who are employed byeither the airport or dedicated ground handling companies. In smaller airports, such as AalborgAirport, one employee can typically maintain various ground handling assignments, whereasin larger airports, like Copenhagen Airports, each employee is typically assigned only one job.Likewise in smaller airports, the airport itself is typically in charge of the ground handling staff,where larger airports usually hire ground handling companies.

The time ground handling takes for an aircraft varies greatly. The amount of ground handlersand equipment assigned to an aircraft is usually dependent on the time before the aircraft has totake off again. Some airplanes have a lot of ground time, and thus the workload is spread out,whereas others have to take off almost immediately, and the work is prioritized highly and a lotof workers are assigned that aircraft.

A rough visualization of the time it takes for a Boeing 747 to be handled can be seen here:

Figure 2.1: A general timetable of a turnaround af Boeing 747.

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.1. GROUND HANDLING IN GENERAL

2.1.1 Delimitation

Ground handling is a very big area, and to cover it all would therefore be to big for this projectso some delimitation needs to be done. When visiting Aalborg Airport we got a look inside howdifferent areas of ground handling are organized and as seen in fig. 2.2 the COO (Kim Bermann),the person who was interviewed during the visit, is in charge of most ground handling servicesat Aalborg Airport. Since Kim is the operational leader, it was chosen only to focus on hisfield, thereby delimiting food and beverage, being the only ground handling tasks Kim is not incharge of, although there will be dealt with communication indirectly.

Figure 2.2: The organisational structure of Aalborg Airport.

The largest field of the ground handling is what is done to the airplane on the apron, thereforewe have decided to delimit all ground handling task not being done on the apron with theexception of cargo and luggage, thereby delimiting check-in, security and taxiing of aircraft,and everything done in-flight. These are the areas left:

• Catering

• Cleaning

• De-icing

• Electricity

• Freight

• Fuel service

• Mechanic

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

• Passenger bridges/stairs

• Conditioned air

• Potable water

• Lavatory service

• Pneumatic

2.2 Tasks

This section will describe which different tasks are done by the ground handling companies andhow they are connected and dependent of each other.

In an interview made in Aalborg Airport with the COO, Kim Bergmann, it was found that manydifferent airlines needs many different services and procedures done to an aircraft. The mostcommon tasks will be covered in this section, but it is important that any airline/ground handlingcompany needs to be able to vary and change these tasks since ground handling is a complexand large operation. To give an overview of what tasks that are done to the airplanes an overviewof the aircraft has been made from the book Airport design and operation [3] chapter 9 whichdescribes the ground handling process in detail. In graph fig. 2.3 we can see the different tasksdone to an normal airplane during an end-station turnaround (a turnaround where passengersand luggage have arrived at their destination and new passengers, luggage and intentionallycrew needs to board the flight).

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

Figure 2.3: An overview of the different ground handling tasks done to an Boeing 777.Airplane model taken from [1]

The amount of tasks needing to be done to an airplane vary from company to company, airportto airport, time of day etc., but this example is used to illustrate all of the categories. It isalso shown where the different tasks are approximately placed on the Boeing 777, this positionof cause vary from airplane to airplane and also the amount of cargo storage areas inside theairplane and the need for either passenger bridges and/or stairs vary from airplane to airplaneand also airport to airport. The sizes of the equipment and vehicles are not exact.

The following sections will describe the different tasks and how they are done.

2.2.1 Catering

The catering services are everything related to the food and drinks on the airplane. There is alot of different ways to handle catering. SAS for example, provides free coffee on all of theirflights, but most of their flights is only national, so there is no need for food. Other companiesdealing with international flights provide food for either all the passengers or to some, who payin advance. This process can only happen after the passengers have left the plane.

When passengers are on long flights, they will be served meals, most of which consist of differ-ent kinds of meat, vegetables and drinks. The pilots are served with the same dishes, althoughthis varies in between the different airlines[15][8]. SAS offer breakfast when flying domesticflights, but only from 6 to 9 AM[24].

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

All these air meals and drinks are prepared and made by the catering services, that are a part ofthe ground handling organisation. The catering companies are chosen by the different airlinesindividually. SAS for example, have used Gate Gourmet[25] as their catering service for anumber of years. The catering services are very difficult in the sense of how complex thelogistic aspect is, as the President of KLM Catering said "Flight catering is 70 percent logisticsand 30 percent cooking”[28]. For this reason the catering services want their operations to go assmoothly as possible. The airline companies are also very interested in getting capable cateringservices, as they can then use the food as a marketing technique[28].

Since logistics are so essential to the catering crews, a way to optimize their workday wouldbe very beneficial for the catering companies, both by making the teams more efficient and bymaking the logistics aspect simpler.

2.2.2 Cleaning

The cleaning crews are a part of nearly every turnaround, making them an important aspect toconsider when designing a solution in an effort to optimize turnaround procedures. Cleaning isa large part of the routine the plane is undergoing when it arrives to the airport.

Which makes the cleaning companies a very interesting part to take a look at.

The time it take to clean the cabin, is roughly half of the time the plane is standing still, accord-ing to the timetable.

Depending on the time it takes to travel to the aircraft, it can take longer than shown on thetimetable.

2.2.3 De-icing

De-icing is the removal of snow and ice from airplanes in the winter. To do this the ground-handling crew uses special chemicals that anti-ice the aircrafts, they also use heat. De-icingis important to do since it affects functionality, stability and control of the airplane[22]. Thede-icing takes place in the time-span of the turn-around of the airplane, though there is anotherway to de-ice if the airplanes needs to stay at the airport for some time. The way to do this is touse preventive de icing when the airplane arrives, which helps prevent ice from forming at theairplane.

2.2.4 Electricity

Often the first point of ground handling, where the plane is connected to the airports powersupply. Here its batteries get charged and get ready for the next flight. The charging stations arealmost exclusively stationary, and located at the front of the apron. This process can happen atthe same time as all the following processes.

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

2.2.5 Freight

In this section the freight handled at airport will be analysed as the transportation of goods andpassengers plays a major role in everyday life at an airport.

Luggage is loaded on the plane using tugs, which transport containers with luggage. The Boeing747 has seats for 416 passengers[21] and can carry roughly 6,500 kg of luggage or 9,568 kg ifthe plane would be entirely booked and every passenger had a 23 kg checked luggage, as in theestimate the hand luggage is not being taken into account. To transport such a huge amount ofluggage, tight planning and careful transport is necessary in order to bring the luggage onto theairplane on time.

Novia and SAS Ground Handling are two ground handling companies that have the responsi-bility of loading luggage[23]. If a passenger’s luggage is, by mistake, sent with a wrong plane,the passenger can contact the airline, and then the airline will talk with the ground handlingcompany, that handled the luggage. In Aalborg Airport, luggage is equipped with a RFID chipthat allows the Airport to track all luggage, and use that information in an advanced sortingmachinery that has managed to almost eliminate loss of luggage.

Luggage is not the only thing transported. Aside from passengers, cargo is a big part of aerialtransportation and is an industry that has existed as long as passenger transportation. AalborgAirport however, does not provide transport services of goods as they only focus on the trans-portation of passengers.

Many integrators, companies using integrated carriers, construct and operate their own terminalwhere their goods arrive and is checked, packed, documented, transported to the apron (the areawhere the flight is serviced by the ground handlers) and so on by their own system, this is notcase of Aalborg Airport, as they do not have any more than one terminal.

When cargo arrives at the airport it normally arrives at a terminal, it is normally transported viaelectrical tugs from the trucks into the terminal in carts carrying bulk cargo, pallets or containers.The cargo is now taken through a sorting process that deposits the goods directly at the stuffingplatforms or they are again taken by conveyor (packages up to a maximum of 30 kg are put intotrays on the conveyers) or fork lift to the platform. Unless the container for a destination is full,the cargo is rearranged at these platforms by destination in new ULDs.

The same method applies to cargo arrived from air, from another airplane where the cargo is intransit in the current airport. The only difference being that this cargo arrives from the air side,not the land side.

This process of rearranging is entirely manual, no matter how mechanized the terminal is (willbe described shortly) and is preferably done on height-adjustable platforms that can indicate theweight and sometimes the stability of the ULD. This information is very important when youload the aircraft to ensure a stable aircraft in balance.

There are five different tasks performed in the terminal:

• Conversion between modes of transport

• Sorting, including breaking down loads from originators and consolidating for destina-tions

• Storage, and facilitating government inspection

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

• Movement of goods from landside to airside and vice-versa, or from aircraft to aircraft

• Documentation: submission, completion, transmission

Getting these five tasks just right and performed smoothly and effectively can reduce the mis-handling rate from 1 : 20 to 1 : 26,000.

A

Cargo and luggage is normally transported in ULDs via roller-bed dollys (Flat carts acting aswheels for the ULDs) to the aircraft and then lifted into the aircraft either from the side orthe front via high-loader vehicles (a truck specialised to raise and move the ULDs inside theaircraft). The ULD can now be organised inside the aircraft on roller beds. The cargo needs tobe loaded in the right order to achieve balance. The bulk cargo (cargo that is not containerizedor on pallets), which has been transported to the flight in carts, can now be loaded into the flightvia self powered conveyer belts. Therefore is it very important for the airport to know if thecargo will arrive in bulks, on pallets or on ULDs and if it needs transportation from the terminalto the apron, or the company will transport it on trucks, granting access to the aprons.

In conclusion; the amount of freight, consisting of cargo, mail and passengers, is present every-day in several tons. The personnel and ULDs are working precisely in order to make sure thefreight is transported to the right locations and flights. The cargo can not wait too long at thestoring areas as there is a certain time limit at most airports. A fully mechanised system will beable to service containers and machines in a very fast manner, as a lot of these flow through theterminals.

2.2.6 Fuel service

Fueling happens in different ways in different airports. In some airports pump vehicles drive upto the planes and fuel them manually, while in other airports, stationary pumps are located onthe individual aprons.

When fueling all passengers must be kept clear from fuel hoes since accidentally rapture (de-pending on the area and size) on the hoes can cause a spill from 33 to 100 liters per second.This is a very dangerous situation since jet fuel is first and foremost a flammable liquid with aflashpoint of 40 degrees Celsius and ignition at 220 degrees Celsius which can occur is the fuelcomes in contact with a hot engine, wheel brake, discharge of static electricity or even open firein form of a smoke from the passengers. Also the jet fuel can cause skin irritation and mustbe washed off immediately. Also all personnel must know where eyewash facilities and delugeshowers are located. [Ramp Operational Satiety Procedures]

Therefore it is recommended that deboarding and boarding of passengers and crew is done whenthe fuel hoes are not pumping.

In chase of an emergency all fueling must be cancelled immediately and the emergency shutoffswitch must be pushed. This is typically placed in front of the aircraft parking position and allapron personnel must know where this switch is located and make sure that access to it is keptclear.

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2.2.7 Air plane Mechanic

To be able to make a thorough analysis of the personal involved in the handling and maintenanceof the flights, it’s necessary to take a look at the relevant workers. Mechanics are the workershandling maintenance, and in this chapter their job and the potential for optimization of this,will be evaluated.

The airplane mechanic has a very important job in the airport, their job is to repair the airplanes.It’s therefore important that these working crews can access the airplane that needs repairingquick and easy, and know where they needs to go, so the airplane can get flying again as quicklyas possible. It is also important that they do their job as good as possible, as every part needs tobe maintained correctly.

In Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, the leading airplane mechanic company regarding tech-nical airplane maintenance is SAS Tech[12].

In Aalborg Airport the method of which the planes are currently gone through for mistakes,is actually not a technician going through the planes known error locations, but it is often abaggage handler with a specific course, so he knows exactly what to look at, at specific placeson the airplane.

The way the scheduling of the airplane reparation happens is that the airtraffic companies them-selves repair the airplanes. Aalborg Airport is not big enough for the airtraffic companies tohave repairs on their planes made there, and therefore it must be set up so the planes will landin another larger airport at a specific time for airplane to get maintained. The maintenance ofthe airplanes often happen in the night time.

If a airplane has trouble and need to be repaired while at Aalborg Airport, a technician willfly in to Aalborg Airport to repair the airplane. This happens a couple of times a year, but asmentioned earlier, schedueled maintanence of the airport does not happen at Aalborg Airport.

If it would be possible for airplane mechanics to know exactly where to go by viewing it on asmartphone, PDA or other portable device, the mechanics would be able to be more productive,as they would know instantly where they where needed for their next task.

Boeing has released an application to help the mechanics get important things like airplanemanuals, and serial numbers for specific parts. If they would be able to do this with everyairplane, or every airplane at Aalborg Airport, it would help the mechanics tremendously as theywould be able to identify the parts they needed much quicker, and therefore the maintenance ofan airplane would be quicker. By using an application you would also be able to find earliermaintenance records, meaning that if another mechanic may have made a mistake, you wouldbe able to identify it much quicker[27].

A downside to making an application like Boeing, could be the obvious problem of Grease. Ifthe Mechanics are supposed to use a tablet, PDA or smartphones, wouldn’t they need to usea lot of time to clean their hands in between using the device, and would this really make therepairing of the aircraft faster?

Other suggestions for application that could help mechanics do their job faster an better include:

• An application that gives suggestions how to fix things by describing the problem (Ex.Weird Noise in Cabin)

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

• An application that would help them calculate different things, like what to setting to setthe torque screwdriver to.

After this has been checked it can be concluded that the only area that can be easily implementedin a software solution, would be the manuals and serial numbers part.

2.2.8 Passenger bridges/stairs

Passengers will leave different planes in different ways. They can leave through a passengerbridge, they can leave by walking from the plane to terminal or on bigger airports they can becollected by a bus. This process typically happens before the fuelling of the plane.

2.2.9 Push back

When all other processes has been completed the airplane can take off. For this to happen apush back has to happen. This happens with the help of a specialised machine called a tractor.With the help of this machine the airplane is pushed to a point where it can easily taxi to therunway.

2.2.10 Missing:

• Conditioned air

• Potable water

• Lavatory service

• Pneumatic

2.2.11 Relationship

Many tasks needs to done before others can start, for instance you need to unload the currentluggage/cargo before new can be loaded or as described in fuel service it is highly recommendedthat passengers leave the airplane before the fueling process can be started. To give a clear andstructured overview the total ground handling service and which tasks can be done simultaneousor rather which needs to be done before others can start fig. 2.4 is divided into 3 individual flows.The figure shows the tasks that needs to be done on a normal turnaround and is inspired from thefigure in the report "Ground Handling Simulation with CAST" page 27 but has been modified togive a clearer overview and has been confirmed by the descriptions given earlier in this section.

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THE GROUND HANDLING PROCESS 2.2. TASKS

Figure 2.4: The frequency of how often incidents of different categories happens.

The three flows are not dependent on each other and can all be done when seemed fit or neces-sary but each flow has a clear stream though it and no steps can be done before all earlier taskshas been done.

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STAKEHOLDERS

3. StakeholdersIn this chapter the different stakeholders for this project will be described. The focus will beon three categories of stakeholders, organisations, management and operational personnel. Themain focus will be on the operational personnel, as these are judged to have the largest interestand use of this project.

3.1 Organisations

This section concerns the organisations which are relevant to this project. The section’s mainfocus will be which jobs and protocols there are in the organisations and how they differ.

3.1.1 Ground Handling Companies

Ground handling companies are one of the primary stakeholders to consider, since they are themain target group for our project.

Ground handling companies provide an array of services for airports and airlines. Among theseare aircraft handling services, such as cabin cleaning, loading and unloading, luggage sortingand ULD (Unit Load Device) control. Besides handling the aircraft, many companies alsohandle passenger services, such as check-in, lost and found and VIP services. Some groundhandling companies even assist with weather briefing and flight operations[11].

For the ground handling companies to handle such a vast amount of services, they need a largenumber of employees carrying out a lot of different tasks. Managing all of these employeesis not an easy job, and can require multiple supervisors, making sure that each of the groundhandlers is working efficiently and that they are not idle for prolonged periods of time. As wehave learned from our interview with Kim Bermann, the job of managing this crew of groundhandlers is usually done manually, where supervisors distribute the workload among the groundhandlers and assign tasks to the ground handlers individually, to the best of their ability. Thismethod is far from ideal, as mistakes can easily happen when assigning tasks among largenumbers of ground handlers, due to the supervisors being pressed on time, as to not delay thework of the ground handlers. These mistakes can potentially be catastrophic as they can leadto problems ranging from delays, due to poor planning, to crucial errors in handling aircraft, toassigning a ground handler to a task in which he does not have the required skills to perform.

To further clarify which specific problems arise when delegating tasks among the ground han-dlers, there will be conducted an interview with an airport. This interview and the results thereofwill be described later.

Aalborg airport is in charge of both the ground handlign and checkin for all companies execptSAS, who is in chage of checkin of their own airplanes. It depends on the size of the airportwho is in charge of the ground handling and checking, Billund and Aalborg airport is in chageby them self, bigger airports like Copenhagen or Amsterdam, are only in chage of the runwaysand securety. For the rest they have other ground handling companies. Until an airport exceeds2.000.000 passengers per year, they can keep all ground handling for them selfs. If they exceeds

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STAKEHOLDERS 3.1. ORGANISATIONS

2.000.000 passengers per year can outside companies make offers, and if they are better, theairport cannot refuse. Aalborg airport has around 1.400.000 passengers per year

The services airplanes can have and the contracts that each company sign, can vary alot. In theIATA Airport Handling Manual all the codes for each of the numbers in a contract can be found,in the IATA Airport Handling Manual each code/number is described. Though compaies usesold contracts, so the codes can vary, the IATA Airport Handling Manual is published every 5year.

In conclusion the many ground handlers performs a high variety of tasks in which they areadministered by their supervisors. If the supervisors are able to retain their overview of theground handling crews, the amount of mistakes and crucial errors are tied to together by thefact, that tasks and jobs are delegated manually to the individual workers.

3.1.2 Airports

In the following section, airports, mainly Aalborg Airport, will be described. THe section willgo into the prices and services of Aalborg Airport, describing prices on things like fuel. In thesection it will also be described how the emergency protocols of big airorts are, and how theseare supposed to be handles. Furthermore the section look at the types and amount of airplanestravveling through Aalborg Airport, and at last it will be described how the teams at Aalborgairport is managed, and how this could be bettered.

Prices and Services

When designing products aimed at airports, it is interesting to find out what services and whatprices the airports usually deal with. In this section we will look at different prices and servicesin airports.

Fueling is an important part of ground handling, since refueling it is a task that must be per-formed every time a planes arrives. Aalborg Airport has an agreement with the Shell corpora-tion, to get their fuel supply from them. The air planes are fueled with a fuel type called 100LL[17], and is a very common aircraft fuel, it is priced at DKK 19.85 pr. litre, which means that ifyou would have to fill up a Boeing 737-800, which can contain 26,020 litres[20], it would costDKK 516,497 plus the start up fee.

As described above it is clear that there is a lot of money going around in an airport, even whenonly one air plane is taken into account. The air planes need to get filled up before every liftoff, since a Boeing 737-800 uses 3,200 litres of fuel pr. hour when it is in the sky. This meansthat if you were to fly from Aalborg to Copenhagen it would cost, just in terms of fuel, DKK47,640, as it takes 45 minutes to fly from Aalborg to Copenhagen.

According to Aerohandlers’ pricelist (, airlines pay upwards of USD 3000 for a single airlineto have ground handling performed upon. This indicates that the cost of performing groundhandling, for the ground handling companies, is also very high. If you were able to optimizeground handling procedures, then costs for the ground handling companies could be reduced,leading to lower prices for the airlines and ultimately lower prices for the passengers. Therefore,optimizing the work flow on ground handling procedures is a very relevant aspect of designingsolutions for aiports.

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STAKEHOLDERS 3.1. ORGANISATIONS

Emergency Protocols

This section will go into the emergency planning of the airports, describing what will happen incase of an emergency, like a plane crash. In this section the three emergency protocols, aircraftaccident on the airport, full emergency and local standby will be described.

All information in this section will be drawn from the Airport Services Manual, Part 7 byInternational Civil Aviation, Second Edition - 1991 [14].

Occasionally unexpected emergencies occur, which the airport needs to respond to. A standardservice manual for handling potential emergencies exists. When designing ground handlingsystems for the airports it is relevant to know how they handle emergency landings: Whichrunways to shut down and prepare for the emergency, how to handle incoming and outgoingtraffic and other airport services.

In general a lot of different organizations is involved in these emergencies, each with their ownresponsibilities. The manual suggest the following plan for an aircraft accident at the airport:

Chapter 4 RESPONSIBILITY AND ROLE OF EACH AGENCY FOR EACHTYPE OF EMERGENCY 4.1 AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT ON THE AIRPORT

4.1.1 General

The airport emergency plan shall be implemented immediately upon an aircraftaccident occurring on the airport. For this type of emergency, responding agenciesare expected to take action as described in 4.1.2 to 4.1.10 below.

4.1.2 Action by air traffic services

4.1.2.1 Initiate emergency response by using the crash alarm communication sys-tem (See Figure 8-1).

4.1.2.2 Notify the rescue and fire fighting service and provide information on thelocation of the accident, grid map reference and all other essential details, includingtime of the accident and type of aircraft. Subsequent notification may expand thisinformation by providing details on the number of occupants, fuel on board, aircraftoperator, and any dangerous goods on board, including quantity and location, ifknown.

4.1.2.3 Close the affected runway and minimize vehicle traffic on that runway toprevent disturbance of accident investigation evidence (See 4.1.5 2) f)).

4.1.2.4 If required, initiate communications to the police and security services, air-port authority, and medical services in accordance with the procedure in the airportemergency plan. Provide the contacts with grid map reference, rendezvous pointand/or staging area and airport entrance to be used.

4.1.2.5 Issue the following Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) immediately: “Airport res-cue and fire fighting service protection unavailable until (time) or until further no-tice. All equipment committed to aircraft accident.”

4.1.2.6 Verify by written checklist that the actions above were completed, indicatingnotification time(s) and name of person completing action.

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STAKEHOLDERS 3.1. ORGANISATIONS

In conclusion, a runaway can then be assigned to "full emergency" or "local standby" statuses,and when an accident occurs, the affected area is closed and traffic through the area is mini-mized. Furthermore, a signal of NOTAM is issued to notify that airport rescue and fire fightingservices are all currently occupied. But it is the airports employees that handles the situationwith a couple other organisations such as fire-fighters, rescue etc., not the ground handlingorganisations.

Air Traffic from Aalborg Airport

In this section the air traffic in Aalborg Airport will be described. This section will go into thespecific planes that travel through Aalborg Airport.

By 2013 there where more then 6,000 official airline flights from Aalborg Airport, of them, themost common types of air crafts are shown in the table below:

Aircraft FlightsBOEING 737-800 2919AIRBUS A-320 2544FAIRCHILD DORNIER 328 1080EMBRAER ERJ 190-100 732AIRBUS A-321 725FOKKER 70 723SAAB 2000 370

The data from this table is gathered from Flightradar24[2].

Aalborg Airport, also have a private air taxi service called North Flying, which can fly privatepassengers [19].

2,500 cargo flights are made daily [18].

In conclusion, the most comman types of aircrafts in Aalborg Airport is the Boeing 737-800and the Airbus A-320, these 2 types of airplanes combined fly more through Aalborg Airport,than the res rest of the aiplanes types combined.

Team Division

In order to make a system that is helpful for the airport, it is important to know the people whosupposedly are going to use it and how they work. In this section the team division will bedescribed in order to get a clear view on the properties of the teams at Aalborg Airport.

All information used in this section have been collected from the interview made at AalborgAirport.

At Aalborg Airport a schedule will be made on a weekly basis, which contains information onwhat tasks the workers are assigned to. The are assigned total of fie teams everyday, as seen infigure 1. The workers are divided into teams that will be responsible for the different departuresand take offs. How the teams are composed may vary from day to day as the workers are ableto perform various tasks. A worker who is taught how to pushback may also be able to do thedeparture checks and so on. After five to six years, a worker should be able to do almost all of

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STAKEHOLDERS 3.2. MANAGEMENT

Figure 3.1: A snippet of a schedule used at the Aalborg Airport

the different tasks that are present at the airport. This is valued by the airport as they believethe workers is more satisfied when their tasks are mixed up once in a while, in order to keepthem challenged. It is different from an airport as Copenhagen Airport where the workers aredesignated only one or two tasks.

In short, the workers at the airport are not always in the same teams or assigned to the sametasks, as they can handle a wide variety of tasks, and because the airport wishes for the workersto be challenged.

Summary of Airport

In conclusion it can be said that it is important for the airports to make sure that they can handleany task or emergency that might come, it could be an airplane that where schedueled to landat antoher airport, but has to land at another airport within 5 minutes, or it could be somethingas serious as a plane crash, and the groundhandlers need to know what they are required to dowhen something like this happens.

Rigth now the ground handlers does not work in specific teams but are assigned to differentteams based on their different skills. This means that a person does not have team members heis also working to together with, and does not always work on the same task.

3.2 Management

In this section the management, those responsible for administrating the ground handlers, willbe described. The management part of the organisation is essential to keep the whole operationrunning. Here it will be described how managers works and what tools they are using and,possibly, are missing.

3.2.1 Supervisors

In this section the focus will be put on the supervisors of the ground handling teams, becausethey are very important stakeholders to consider when developing programs which apply toground handlers.

The supervisors have to direct the ground handlers effectively, and monitor their performancelevel [4]. Therefore it is the supervisors, who bear the main responsibility if the program is inef-fective or decreases worker performance. If the program should be any of the aforementioned,

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STAKEHOLDERS 3.3. PASSENGERS

the supervisors have the biggest say in deciding whether to terminate the use of the program ornot.

For the program to be most relevant for the supervisors, it should be designed with features thatease or simplify the workload of the supervisors. This could be features like making it easier tomotivate the workers, dynamically allocating tasks among the workers and making performanceevaluation reports easily available to the supervisor.

An important aspect about supervisors, is that they need access to information that is relevantto them, but not the ground handlers.

3.3 Passengers

In a survey made by eTN (Global Travel Industry News), more than 3.200 people were askedwhat they considered the most important things about a flight. Their answers included thingslike more enough legroom, better seats, no baggage fees and Wi-Fi access[13]. More and morepassengers have a smarthphone, meaning that if an app showing flight delays were available,they would be able to be updated on the go. An app which could make the passengers checkin at the airport would also be a step forward, since 21% of the passengers already use mobileboarding passes.

In conclusion the passengers have different expectations for the flight companies, and it will notbe easy to satisfy every customer fully. To do so would be a major challenge, but also one thatmight raise the number of people traveling with air traffic, but for ground handling companies,passengers is no concern, other than check-ins and take-off schedules, which the passengersrequire. With that said, a smartphone application that would help the passengers check in akeep updated with their flights would be a great improvement for the passengers.

3.3.1 Cabin Crew

In this section the focus will be put on which tasks and responsibilities the cabin crew takes on.

Ahead of each flight, the entire flight crew are required to show up to a briefing about theflight[7].

At the briefing, the crew undergoes the safety protocols, emergency check lists, the targetedflight location, and how much safety equipment are on board the flight. The flight personal isin charge of boarding V.I.P. passengers, families with small kids, and passengers with specialneeds[7].

Once a airplane has taken off, the crew serves food and drinks to the passengers and personal.While they serve, it is their responsibility to periodically conduct cabin checks and listen forany unusual noises. They additionally have to perform periodic checks on the lavatories, herethe crew investigates the mandatory ashtray and if smoke detectors have been tampered with aswell as restocking the lavatories. In addition, the cockpit needs to be checked regularly to ensurethe pilot’s health and safety. Before each landing, the crew gathers food trays and rubbish tobe disposed before the final landing procedure is initiated, fastening all loose items and a finalcabin check is performed[7].

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STAKEHOLDERS 3.3. PASSENGERS

In summary the cabin crew needs a specific briefing before take off, and during the flight thecrew will check the state of the airplanes safety[7].

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PLANNING

4. PlanningAll these tasks that needs to be done during the day of cause need to be organized and plannedand especially. This section of the report will therefore look into how the airports currently areplanning the day since we a Aalborg Airport found out that an airplane in princip can tell thatit is arriving 5 minutes before it is, how they deal with such unexpected situations. It will alsoanalyse the problems with the current system and how this can be improved.

4.1 State of the Art

In the interview with Kim Bermann at Aalborg Airport, Kim mentioned which kind of differentsoftware Aalborg Airport uses.

Right now Aalborg Airport uses a program called TimePlan. The program is a basic planningtool, where the administration has to either manually setup an entire week, and then repeat it,or they have the opportunity to copy a previous week. If any changes occur during a week,the changes have to be done manually. Any change during a workday is changed on a piece ofpaper, which is hanging near the apron.

Figure 4.1: An image displaying the program TimePlan.

Every department have their own system, where each person gets a job description when theground handler meets. The system tells the worker what the worker specific need to do through-out the day.

The way it work is the whole week is worked into TimePlan, then a time sheet where eachairplane, and who is going to work on it, is worked into a Microsoft Excel page, and thenprinted.

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PLANNING 4.2. SUGGESTIONS

Figure 4.2: An image displaying an example of the used excel document.

Every worker need to check in every day so the program can keep track of who is workingthe specific date, and who is not. TimePlan also comes with a application where workers canexchange who is work.

4.1.1 Peakhours

Aalborg Airport has its peak hours during the morning and during the evening, peak hoursmeans that the traffic in the airport is vastly increased.

Aalborg Airport also has the opportunity to call people in people if they suddenly need morehelp on the apron. The workers can either be part time workers, students or workers workingovertime. The reason for calling more workers is often an unplanned airplane landing.

More personal can maybe do a task quicker, which is very important to the program, and couldbe added.

4.2 Suggestions

A couple of suggestions on how to boost safety and maintain on-time schedules, were concludedby [6], the report is based on an investigation, and questionnaires, on both the management seg-ment and the operational segment of an airport. According to operational personnel the mostfrequent factor in directly causing time consuming incidents, is equipment in use at turnaround.Personal factors relation to incidents, both operational personnel and management have unifiedopinions in that stress, fatigue and time pressure is biggest contributors. These relate to mostoccurring delays and disruptions in operations of takeoffs and landings. To cope with time pres-sure, stress and fatigue, it is recommended to provide complementary training and evaluate ifthe focus should be on on-time-departure or on-time-arrival to ease time pressure on employ-ees. Another suggestion is standardizing terminology ensuring that miscommunication occursless often and finding a common opinion between management- and operation-organisation onmaintenance of equipment and tools to deal with poor equipment factor. Introducing someof these actions could possibly result in reducing the number of incidents during the groundhandling process.

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PLANNING 4.3. CONCLUSION ON MOTIVATION AND STRESS

4.3 Conclusion on motivation and stress

Previous sections on stress, motivation and suggestion to solving some these, concludes that itspossible to introduce preventive measures to ease and promote an effective work environment,but that stress and motivation is depended on the individual working. Some of these measurecan be taken into consideration in formulating a product that accounts for these factors.

4.4 How to avoid bad planning

In this section bad planning will be described, as a number of significant consequences followif different tasks and jobs are poorly planned. Tools to overcome bad planning will also bedescribed.

Bad planning can have different consequences resulting in outcomes such as plane delays, lostincome, stress and so forth. It is therefore important that the planning is as efficient as possible,to ensure that the ground handling companies can perform all their tasks in the desired timeframe.

To avoid bad planning, it is important to utilize different tools. These tools are described in "IN-SERT REFERENCE". Avoiding bad planning does not necessarily suggest that one wouldhave to make adjustments to the current way of handling different operations, however it couldbe necessary that one would need to come up with new ideas on how to avoid bad planning.

Tom Mochal who is president of TenStep [26] says that one of the major things that can makeprojects fail, or take longer time than needed, is the way that not all job are defined well enough.One way it could be made more clear to the people working on the project or job, is to give thema PDA, smartphone or tablet, and write out the job on the device. This would make sure thatthey have understood the job properly.

Another method that could be used, would be to give the employees the first part of a day tomake sure that they had properly understood all the tasks that they are to do that day.

In conclusion; bad planning should be avoided in order to minimize plane delays, lost incomeand stress. An electronic device could help the employees to get a better understanding of whatthey have to do at the job. Some of the planning tools that is available to use:

Mind map is a way to create a mental map of all the ideas that is important to a project. Mindmap does not require a huge knowlage of the desired project before creation. The teknik is verysimple, by putting the main topic in the middle, and then connecting all the valid thoughts to it.Some of the bennefits that comes with mind map is, by creating an image of how the thoughtsis connected, instead just plain text is, it’s easier to pick up the thoughts processs from last worksession.

SWOT is a abbreviation of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The method cre-ates via a simple process, structure and overview over a organization strength and competitiveposition by focusing on the four above categories specified.

A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt chart illustrating thedates of the start and end time of the tasks in the project and displays a summary of the project.

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

Scrum is based on software development can be a complex and unpredictable process and there-fore is more a form of controlled black box rather than a planned process. This is one of thebiggest differences between Scrum and waterfall and spiral methods that consider developmentas a fully orchestrated process.

Some of the benefits from Scrum are: - Flexible schedules - Flexible deadlines - Small de-velopment team - Frequent review - Object Orientation - Cooperation between developmentteams

4.5 Safety and Incident Contributors

In NLR Air Transport Safety Institute’s (an embedded research and consultancy organizationwithin the non-profit organisation ’National Aerospace Laboratory’ in Netherlands, an institutewhich European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) uses data from) report [5], "Aircraft groundhandling and human factors" finished in April 2010, on the; "... causal factors which lead to hu-man errors during the ground handling process and create unsafe situations, personal accidentsor incidents." (Page 1 of the report); it was found that the largest safety related issues accordingto operational personnel and management comes from standardization of phraseology on theramp and human factors such as time pressure, stress, fatigue and communication. This partof the report will describe the detailed findings of the query related to this project and theirrecommendations to the ground handling companies.

4.5.1 Incidents

First of all, one of the interesting findings in the report, was that of what types of accidentshappen, and at what relative frequency. In fig. 4.3, we can clearly see that incidents that causeoperational disruptions, equipment damage and aircraft damage happen at least once a week.As described in section [Freight] damage will not only be costly to repair, it will also mostlikely cause airplane delays, which can be very expensive for the airlines. Of course operationaldisrupts also result in delays and therefore loss of income.

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

Figure 4.3: The frequency of how often incidents of different categories happens.

To underline this point, the study found that delay of incoming and departing flights as a causeof these incidents each happen around once a week (page 29).

4.5.2 Contributing factors

The survey also researched the contributing factors, and their frequency, to different kinds ofaccidents. As seen in fig. 4.4 it was found that the two most contributing factors are personaland communication, i.e. mistakes made by people and errors in the communication betweenpeople.

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

Figure 4.4: The contributing factors and how often they contribute to accidents.

Next to these two factors environment/facilities/ramp and leadership/supervision also receive ahigh rating from the two groups.

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

4.5.3 Personal Factors

A very important conclusion, related to this project, in the report is which factors contributeto personal errors and mistakes made by operational personnel and management. As seen infig. 4.5 it was found that the three major factors contributing to errors and mistakes made bythe personnel is time pressure, stress, fatigue and motivation has a high rating. Especially timepressure is a very high contributor according to both operational personnel and management.It is also expected that both stress and fatigue most likely are consequences of time pressure.In interviews made with both management and the operational personnel it was found that thereason for fatigue is most likely caused by the ground handling staff having to work doubleshifts (for different employers) to generate sufficient income. These interviews expressed thatprofessional pride to meet the departure time may result in shortcuts being taken.

Figure 4.5: Breakdown of channels used to book flights.

It is important to take these contributors into account when considering a solution to prevent,and solve, the problem which is damage to aircraft, equipment, personal injury, operationaldisrupts and environmental impact.

4.5.4 Communication

The communication of safety issues is considered important for the personnel to learn from eachother and take proactive action. It is therefore considered important to have a safety reporting

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

system and actually both management and operational personnel did not know or recognize anyreporting system in their own ground handling organization.

Figure 4.6: What kind of miscommunication causes incidents and errors.

4.5.5 Information

The fifth highest contributor to accidents is information. As seen in fig. 4.7 most information er-rors contribute evenly, except incorrect manufacturer/aircraft documentation which is the lowestcontributor. This is most likely caused by the fact that ground handling personnel is not closelyassociated with these documents since their company documents already have the proceduresand manuals explaining the same.

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

Figure 4.7: Contributors to errors made because of incorrect information.

It is important though to keep in mind that communication can only be effective if the informa-tion is correct and these things therefore need to be in order.

4.5.6 Safety

When considering safety it is important to consider whether to work safely or to meet the sched-uled departure time is prioritized highest by the employees. In one of the interviews it wasexpressed that it is often thought that the quicker and better the personnel are at meeting thedeparture times, the more unsafe the work gets, but in reality there is always a balance and ifthat balance is met, safety is not compromised.

4.5.7 Environment

According to the survey both management and the operational personnel agree that, when talk-ing about factors surrounding the environment, facilities and ramp, which is the fourth highestcontributor, rain, wind and snow is the highest contributors. Also humidity, cold and lightning ishigh contributors. This means that the inefficiency and the rate of accidents, errors and incidentsis significantly higher if the weather is bad.

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PLANNING 4.5. SAFETY AND INCIDENT CONTRIBUTORS

4.5.8 Management

Considering organizational factors both management and operational personnel agrees the in-sufficient personnel is the biggest contributor, though this is expressed significantly stronger bythe operational personnel. In the interviews made with both groups it was expressed that giventhe current economic tense climate, turnarounds are scheduled with a minimum amount of per-sonnel. This of course means that delays and incidents are harder to deal with and thereforemore experienced personnel is needed.

Figure 4.8: Contributors to bad organization.

4.5.9 Leadership

The study also shows that the biggest contributors when talking about leadership, which is theeighth largest contributor to errors, is motivation, prioritization of work and planning. Thisshows that, when trying to remove the problems discussed in the section, motivating and orga-nizing the workday is very important.

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PLANNING 4.6. STRESS

4.5.10 Technical factors

In fig. 4.9 the important thing to note is that the highest contributor to errors and incidents istask planning. Therefore it is important that the planning of the tasks is done properly to avoiderrors and incidents.

Figure 4.9: Technical contributors to errors and incidents.

4.6 Stress

In this section the effects of stress, and how to handle it will be analysed and described.

When dealing with work related stress the biggest causes are normally organisational factors,and the solution is normally to gain control through prevention and management.

When trying to understand stress it is important to understand that a situation can only bepotentially stressful depending on the person experiencing it. This means that a situation canevoke stress for one person, but the same situation can have no effect for another, dependingon their way of handling, understanding and viewing the situation. Aside from the personnormally timing frequency, intensity and duration are factors that determinate how big of animpact a potentially stressful situation can have on the person.

HSE’s longitudinal studies of occupational stress shows that:

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PLANNING 4.6. STRESS

"HSE’s longitudinal studies of occupational stress using changes in naturally occurring worksituations have provided evidence that over quite short periods of time the nature of the worksituation to which the person is exposed has significant effects on mental health quite apart fromcontributions from personality and pre-existing psychological health."

When dealing with work related stress an organization first need to manage and treat people onan individual level meaning that they first need to treat the people that are already stressed[16].

After treating the individuals the organization need to approach its employees with interventionsthat restructure the work flow. Coordination of work tasks and inform their employees aboutthe situation and how to deal with these changes. This approach is also very preventive forfuture problems, and can lead to, new work tasks and flow if it is done correctly, the potentiallystressful situations can be completely removed thereby removing the problem.

At this time the importance of training the individuals in managing potentially stressful situationthemselves, must be noted and it is largely accepted that this is the key to a healthy workforce.

Individual stress management focus on biofeedback, muscle relaxation and cognitive restruc-turing of appraisal and coping responses. This is a good approach because:

• They can quickly be evaluated and established without needing to change any organiza-tional structure or work flow.

• "They can encompass the need to take into account perceptions and reactions and are thusparticularly appropriate for individual needs."

• "They may be helpful in combating non-work as well as work-based stress problems(which may interact synergistically)."

• "They can be incorporated into existing employee assistance health-education packages."

One of the problems when dealing with stress as an individual, is to understand the complexsituation with all the work and non-work related factors the contribute to ones mental healthand their feelings of uneasiness or distress. Most people will need help from specialist to un-ravel this. When combating stress in work-related situations on an individual, the managementorganization can either help the person cope and handle poorly designed methods or tasks.

"Moreover the impact of stress inoculation training may decrease over time leading to the needfor repeated refresher training."

"The suggestion from some quarters is that stress management training should only be used tosupplement organisational changed job redesign programmes in order to deal with stress whichcannot be excluded from the job very easily, for example, seasonal workloads. Thus manage-ment at the secondary level should be used to supplement attempts to assess and restructuresources of stress in the work environment- organisational, ergonomic and psychosocial."

In conclusion to this section, it can be seen that stress is a part of the work of most groundhandlers. A few ways to cope with stress has been analysed, and it can be concluded that asimple stress-relief program can be implemented fairly easily.

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PLANNING 4.7. MOTIVATION

4.7 Motivation

In order to ensure the ground handling employees work at their optimal performance, regardingboth attention(safety) and speed, their individual motivation must be accounted for. Studieson this subject argues that; "intrinsic motivation (based in interest) and autonomous extrinsicmotivation (based in importance) are both related to performance, satisfaction, trust, and well-being in the workplace" [9].

It is important to maintain autonomous intrinsic motivation so that an employee’s level of spe-cific competence matches the requirements for that specific task; the task must not be too diffi-cult or too simple. Failing to meet this will result in amotivation towards certain tasks, becausethe employee feels it is not what is important, or that they are incompetent. Although taskswill occur in a ground handling environment, an extrinsic motivation can promote autonomousbehaviour to get a raise or so the boss won’t become upset. All of the factors shown in fig. 4.10.

Figure 4.10: Different types of motivation

A model of job characteristic introduced by Hackman and Oldham, which suggested the mosteffective factors of building motivation is through optimal job design [10], as shown in fig. 4.11.

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PLANNING 4.8. CONSEQUENCES OF BAD PLANNING

Figure 4.11: Model of job characteristic [10]

• provide variety, involve completion of a whole, and have a positive impact on the lives ofothers;

• afford considerable freedom and discretion to the employee

• provide meaningful performance feedback.

Constructive feedback can influence autonomous motivation, but it also suggests that the su-pervisors and managers are important in creating a work environment, consisting of a mix ofintrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, which is superior in situations that include bothcomplex tasks that are interesting and less complex tasks that require discipline.

4.8 Consequences of Bad Planning

Bad planning in a business aspect can trigger array of consequences. The direct effects of badplanning, in the context of ground handling companies, could for example be inefficient sched-ules for the ground handlers and/or difficulties attaining performance reports on the groundhandlers.

These direct consequences do not stand for themselves. Each of these cases give rise to anentirely new sprout of indirect consequences. Looking at the case of inefficient schedules forthe ground handlers, we need to define what it means for a schedule to be inefficient. Here thereare three different cases

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PLANNING 4.8. CONSEQUENCES OF BAD PLANNING

• The duties on the schedules could be too close to each other

This means that the ground handler does not have the time to finish the first task without delay-ing the next. Consequences for this case includes amongst others, stress for the ground handler,delays in the overall handling schedule for the day and less productive days than anticipated bythe supervisors.

• The time it takes for a ground handler to move from task A to task B could be underesti-mated

This case has some of the same consequences as the first one. If the ground handler suddenlyhas less time to do what he needs to, than he had anticipated, he will become stressed and thesecond task could be delayed.

• The ground handler could be assigned to a task which he is inexperienced with

This could be a very dangerous situation, as many ground handlers do important jobs when itcomes to aircraft operation and maintenance. If a vital task, such as making sure the landinggear works properly, is done badly, it puts the aircraft and its passengers and crew at risk.

A different aspect on poor planning, is the perspective of the supervisors. The supervisors needto understand how their crewmen perform; who is better at one task and who is better at another.Doing so manually takes a lot of energy for the supervisors, who need to keep up with all ofthe individual ground handlers[4]. If the ground handlers’ schedules are poorly planned, thesupervisor’s view of the ground handlers could be affected by this. If a supervisor sees thatone employee is always performing poorly, he could think that the employee is therefore a poorperformer. In reality it is just as likely that the employee is not assigned to his preferred task, orthat he is stressed.

To avoid these consequences, a good software solution would not only make planning easier, itwould also make sure that the planning is done optimally.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

5. Problem StatementGround handling companies often hire workers, who work in an environment where they areexposed to congestion, stress, noise, jet-blast, extreme weather conditions and sometimes lowvisibility. Stress is a very big factor in the work in an airport, especially to the ground handlers,since airline companies only make money, while the flights are airborne, therefore the groundhandlers are very pressed on time, to reduce the time the flight spends on the ground. In manyplaces it is also the ground handlers, who are responsible for delays; in case of a delay, theymight even be deducted in salary.

When a worker is stressed he is more likely to make mistakes, which could lead to seriousaccidents. These accidents can first and foremost become dangerous for the workers becausethey can be hurt as a result of an accident. A survey made by ACI[citation needed] in 2004showed that out of 15,119,020 aircraft movements 3,233 had accidents, concluding that 0.214%of all turnovers had accidents.

Accidents do not only lead to dangerous situations for the workers, but they can also get veryexpensive for the companies; first of all because of the cost of the repair, but also because theaeroplane will then have to spend more time on the ground.

5.1 Problem Formulation

Human errors and accidents during a turnaround is a result of stressed and unmotivatedground handlers, causing delays, damage to equipment, loss of airtime and other unwanted,

and expensive, annoyances for airlines and ground handling providers. Is it possible todevelop a software solution to reduce delays and stress factors by dynamically adapting

ground handlers’ schedules to non-scheduled situations?

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TEMP

6. TEMP

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TEMP

Figure 6.1: UML example

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Part II

Product Development

FUTURE

7. Future

7.1 Future Improvements

Det kunne være meget fordelagtigt at arbejde med at organisere udstyr så vel som personale damange specielt store lufthavne måske ville kunne have problemer med at vide hvor deres udstyrvar henne. Dette ville kunne reducere mængden af udstyr der skal bruges og gøre det nemmerefor dem der skal reparere specifikt udstyr.

Write paragraph about how its possible to utilize performance reviews for assign employeesthat work well in a stressed situation

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BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY

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