The countdown has already begun for the presentation of our bid for the Ground Handling tenders that Aena published at the beginning of the summer at Spanish airports, and at Iberia Airport Services we are working hard to prepare it:  “We hope to renew the licences at as many airports as possible and, to achieve this, we are working on a very competitive economic offer and various innovative solutions that allow us to improve the service to our customers by relying on the latest technology, a more efficient management of resources and the development of our activity in a more sustainable way,” says José Luis de Luna, Director of Airports at Iberia.

The specialised magazine Avion Revue dedicates a report to us in its current issue, in which they detail our greatest strengths to achieve this.

Avion Revue septiembre

• More than 125,000 flights, 33 per-cent more than in 2021 but still 10.8 per-cent less than in 2019

• 19 million bags, 62 percent more than last year and 8.2 percent less than before the pandemic.

José Luis de Luna, Iberia’s Director of Airports, pointed out that “it has been a good summer, with very positive activity figures, although still somewhat lower than those recorded in 2019, before the pandemic. Before the start of the summer campaign, we prepared ourselves and, as early as June, we oversized the workforce to be able to cope with the possible increase in activity, which in the end was more than 60 percent compared to last year”.

In the months of June, July, August and September, Iberia Airport Services handled 32.2 million passengers, 64 per cent more than in 2021, although still less than before the pandemic (-9.6 per cent); nearly 110 000 flights, which is 33 per cent more activity than in 2021 (-10.8 per cent versus 2019); and handled more than 19 million bags -62 per cent more than in 2021 (-8.2 per cent versus 2019).

Children have been the protagonists of the holidays, also in Spanish airports. Iberia’s airport division has attended to more than 28,500 minors travelling unaccompanied, 40 per-cent more than in 2021 (-20 per cent vs 2019), with the weekend of 16-17 July being the busiest, with more than 1 100 children attended to.

Practically all Spanish airports have increased their activity compared to last year, and some such as Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza, Gran Canaria, Tenerife North, Santiago, Vigo, Asturias or San Sebastian have exceeded the activity carried out in 2019.

“At IBAS we are very satisfied with these figures and the contribution we make with our activity so that companies such as Iberia and Vueling are usually among the most punctual airlines in the world. All of this also allows us to face the winter season with the transformation of more than 1,700 permanent and discontinuous workers, trained and prepared to maintain the best service to our client companies”, said de Luna.

A team from Iberia Airport Services was present last week at the international trade fair GSE EXPO EUROPE in Le Bourget, Paris.

For the first time since the pandemic, we had the opportunity to meet personally with exhibitors from all over the world, re-establish contacts and learn first-hand about innovations in this sector: autonomous technology, hydrogen energy, electric and sustainable propulsion equipment, safety systems on the apron, more efficient batteries.

“It has been very gratifying to participate in this fair. At Iberia Airport Services, we are committed to sustainability, fleet electrification, process automation and operational safety”, Nicolas Fernandez, Supply Chain

The specialist magazine, Actualidad Aeroespacial, highlights in its current issue the importance of sustainability for IBAS. And it is absolutely right. Caring for the environment, energy efficiency and reducing the carbon footprint are at the heart of every company’s strategy, including ours. At IBAS we have designed a roadmap in which sustainability is the main pillar.

You can see the full magazine here, and the feature on our sustainability strategy is on page 40.

https://actualidadaeroespacial.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Actualidad-Aeroespacial-2022-Septiembre

We hope you enjoy reading it.

Last March, at the LCG airport, the day passed normally (in times of restrictions, which meant an exhaustive control of documentation to be able to travel and punctual queues to check-in for this reason) and Margarita Brun, passenger supervisor, was on duty.

A passenger bound for Bangladesh arrives at the counter. It is not a very frequent destination. Checking that all the documentation necessary to fly is in order requires an exhaustive review. One of the requirements was missing.

Margarita provided this document to the passenger, printed and handed it over. The grateful passenger told him “you don’t really know what you just did”. The passenger left and Margarita continued doing her daily work.

A story that did not end here since weeks later the passenger returned to ask about Margarita, to thank her for her willingness and collaboration and explained the beautiful story in which Margarita, without knowing it, became one of the protagonists. The passenger was a doctor traveling to Bangladesh to operate on an 8-year-old girl who had broken her spine.

After the operation, Nupur, in an amazing rehabilitation, managed to recover the movement of his legs and walk again.

The doctor from Coruña told Margarita the story of this girl, thanked her for her work and also left her a reflection that we want to share, a written “formula” that he explained as follows: (C+H x A). “He told me that C is our ‘knowledge’ and H is our ‘skills.’ We all have them, they serve us for work, for leisure… for life in general. We develop them over the years, knowledge and skills add up. The third letter, A, stands for ‘attitude’ and ‘attitude multiplies, good and bad. And if attitude is 0, anything multiplied by 0 equals 0.”

With this equation, the doctor emphasized how the gesture of the flight supervisor, “her step forward”, allowed a girl from a poor Asian country, “who she does not know and possibly will never know, life to give her a second chance” . To finish, he told her: “Since you didn’t know what you did that morning, I’m here to tell you.”

In this link published by the Voice of Galicia, you can meet Nupur and Margarita.

Thank you Margaret! We are very proud of the human quality of our employees.

Gran Canaria International Airport is located in the bay of Gando, occupying the surface of the municipalities of Ingenio and Telde.

It is located at a distance of 18 km (kilometres) from the capital of the island, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and 25 km from the tourist centers in the south of the island.

Located 23 meters above sea level, its optimal weather conditions help to consider Gran Canaria airport as one of the safest, extending its operations 24 hours a day.

It is the only airport in the Canary Islands with two runways, which are arranged in parallel, and allow a maximum operating capacity of 53 operations/hour. Both tracks have a length of 3100 m (meters) and a width of 45 m.

Gran Canaria Airport has a constant flow of passengers throughout the year, with peaks in the summer and winter months.

In 2019, it received 13,261,228 passengers, ranking 6th nationally and making it the first airport in the Canary Islands.

In 2014, the new expansion of Gran Canaria Airport was inaugurated. It has two terminals, one for flights from the European Union and Spain and another for non-community and island flights.

It has traditionally had significant air traffic from the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavian countries, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France and Italy throughout the year.

Iberia Airport Services has a workforce that fluctuates according to the season, reaching over 200 people to serve the more than 20 client companies, with the IAG group being the ones with the highest volume of operations on the island. As a peculiarity, LPA is the only Spanish airport where the company Mauritania Air operates.

Juan Reino is the manager of this airport: “I started working at Iberia when I was 19 years old, at the Barajas Cargo Terminal (1985). Although raised in Madrid, I am a Canarian by birth and perhaps that is why life took me to Gran Canaria in 1994, to the Passenger Unit, where I have been a supervisor, head of service and head of unit before being head of scale in La Palma, Murcia and Tenerife Sur. I have very good experiences from all these airports and pleasant memories of the colleagues I have met”.

Francisco Rosales is head of service at LPA and what he values ​​most about his job is “the dynamics of working at an airport and how completely different everything becomes when you work around a machine like the plane and the world around it, which everyone is fascinated”.

He transmits passion for his work, he likes to anticipate situations and problems, and he also recommends a few tips about his island: “I recommend visiting and enjoying Las Canteras beach, unique for its location, temperature and context. Also, a must see, the historic center of Vegueta and Triana street; Few places offer as much colonial architecture in perfect condition as this one. Strolling through its streets is a joy; It takes you back to times when our great-great-grandparents walked and lived in them as the only existing city. Two views that we cannot miss: The first, from the upper neighborhood of Las Coloradas, the entire north coast of the city, with Las Canteras as the main focus, a reverse perspective to the usual and from the top of that entire coast. And the second, from the upper city, going up the Don Zoilo ravine, the whole perspective of the pier, maritime avenue and garden city.

My favorite restaurant, La Barracuda, is on the marina. It has a magnificent kitchen and fabulous views of Las Alcaravaneras.”

Sol de la Macorra, manager of American Airlines in Spain and Portugal, presents the “Customer Cup” to the team at Madrid Barajas airport, which accredits the handling we provide in the ramp area, coordination (with a team of more than 30 coordinators trained for their operations) and UM service as the best in category 1 (which includes stopovers with a volume of 10 flights per day or less) in the first quarter of 2022, among all the international stopovers where American Airlines operates.

This recognition highlights the day-to-day operational excellence with which we serve this strategic customer’s “triple seven” (B-777) aircraft, maintaining the highest levels of quality, efficiency and punctuality on the 35 flights we support each week (1,650 flights annually) from Madrid to Dallas, New York, Miami, Philadelphia and Charlotte.

“Despite the great challenges we are facing every day, we are deeply grateful for the great work being done by each of the people who make up the ramp team that serves our flights and who give the best of themselves to meet these challenges together,” says Sol.

Rubén Menéndez, Companies Support Manager, “We are extremely proud of our teams. Acknowledgements like this are proof of the work and effort we put in every day with each of our client companies as well as the human value and daily communication we demonstrate on each of their flights”.

Thank you all, congratulations Barajas!

• The ISAGO (IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations) certificate accredits handling agents that comply with the highest safety standards defined by IATA. ISAGO, as with IOSA (IATA Operational Safety Audit) for the airline, reviews through an exhaustive audit all the operational procedures and processes that we carry out, the regulations that we have published and many other aspects of the documentation that regulates ground operations, verifying that all of this complies with the regulatory requirements and IATA standards.

To carry out this inspection, once requested by us, IATA appoints a global Audit Organisation, which in turn assigns an audit team to review more than a thousand operational standards spread across the five areas in which we carry out our activity:

• Company organisation (SMS, Training, Quality, etc.).
• Passenger and baggage assistance
• Aircraft loading and unloading (handling of equipment, wheeling, etc.).
• Control of aircraft loading and centring
• Aircraft movement on the ground

On behalf of IBAS, all areas related to the operation have actively collaborated, both Central Services and Madrid-Barajas Airport Management, coordinated from the Quality and Environment area.

IBAS has just renewed this certificate at Madrid-Barajas Airport, a further step towards excellence, quality and safety in our services as a handling agent. A recognition of the experience and work of our employees for their involvement, commitment and constant effort.

An endorsement of excellence in operational safety for our portfolio of more than 150 client companies, and a benchmark for the renewal of handling licences.

Ibas is exploring new initiatives to accelerate the digitalisation of turnaround and make airport processes more efficient and agile.

In addition to remote-controlled push back tractors for push back in Barcelona and Madrid, we are using an innovative operational management tool called Kepler, which unifies all traditionally used applications into a single one and allows resource planning, real-time monitoring of the operation, invoice management and data analysis, as well as the development of other in-house collaborative tools that improve communication and collaboration between teams.

In addition, we are working on automatic load sheets, developing a more intuitive and agile system, called IRIS, which allows us to reduce indecencies and time between operations.

Flynews echoes our innovation in this recently published article.

Espacio Iberia, located in the heart of Madrid, at calle Velázquez, 37, is a 350 square metre space open to the public to enjoy a different and unique experience.

We have recreated the cabin of an aeroplane, with Business, Premium Economy and Economy seats, where visitors can enjoy the experience as it is offered in flight at 30,000 feet, but without having to take off from the ground.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Wine tasting, beer tasting, show cooking, coffee tasting… and even a walk through the history of our uniforms, which visitors can try on and have photographed with a fun 360º Glam Cam. In addition, visitors to the Iberia Space can also purchase iconic merchandising objects.

An experience that we also share with our employees, dedicating this space exclusively to them, in recognition of them, our people, because they are the face of our service and attention to each of our customers, the ones who personalise and humanise this experience every day at our airports. Today we have brought together check-in and ramp agents, coordinators, trainers, administrative staff and their managers so that for one day they can become customers by living “their experience with Iberia”.

We all add up with these internal events that bring together colleagues from different areas, exchange impressions, live and feel like a passenger, get to know the services we offer in first person and, above all, get out of their routine, because they deserve it. We are proud of you and grateful to share this space today, which we have enjoyed!

We remind you that anyone can book these activities in advance at https://espacio.iberia.com or at the reception of Espacio Iberia, as the capacity is limited. Open every day, from 12 to 21h from Monday to Sunday, including public holidays, until 30 June.