IATA member airlines have been contributing to the development of the IATA Ground Operations Manual (IGOM) since 2007. Over the past several years IGOM has set a direction towards standardization, which nearly everyone in the industry thinks should be followed.
“IGOM’s early days saw little take-up from the airlines. The ground service providers (GSPs) however quickly identified the potential benefits of unified, consistent standards and a manual of references that would also align and match with the IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations (ISAGO) and the Airport Handling Manual (AHM),” says Maurizio Anichini of consultancy Twiga Aero.
“Unfortunately, still today, many airlines do not fully adopt and implement IGOM,” he continues. “IATA measures and provides statistics on the number of member airlines, which have undergone what is known as the IGOM gap analysis. This approach determines how many IGOM standards match, exceed or are below the IGOM standards. Measuring a gap analysis does not ensure its implementation.”
“If we compare the previous versions of IGOM with the current version, the last version enables more options with certain procedures,” adds Jan Abraham, quality manager at Czech Airlines Handling, providing handling services at Prague Airport. “If we look, for example, into the simple aircraft chocking procedure, we can notice that previous versions of IGOM provided one standard chocking for aircraft type. The latest versions provide options for aircraft chocking for the same aircraft type. Simple procedures should avoid variations and should have simple standards. There should be one standard for aircraft chocking for one type of aircraft.”
On one hand, it can be said IGOM has not yet reached its full potential. On the other hand, it is also true that IGOM is progressively developing.
“We see it very positively about IGOM implementation. Most of the major airlines and GSPs are following IGOM as the base of their GOMs or standard operating procedures (SOP),” says Sachiyo Miyata, head of operational standards and key account support at Swissport International. “This has significantly supported the ‘standardization’ of ground handling. A challenge is that IGOM provides a set of minimum recommendations and airlines may have more requirements than IGOM, therefore GSPs need to comply accordingly.”
“dnata top management has mandated the endorsement of IGOM across our dnata airport operations. IGOM has become our reference manual,” adds Chrystelle Haddad, quality and compliance manager at dnata. “The harmonization and integration of our procedures, aligned to IGOM standards, aim to meet high levels of safety and reliability for customer experience. This sets a benchmark, which we continuously strive to achieve and maintain.”
Procedural Development
While the standards on how to work the basic airline procedures for ground operations are fundamentally the same when a company decides to adopt and implement IGOM, the process requires a full procedural review.
“Many companies might find this an additional burden. However, all the standards point to the fact that SOPs must undergo a yearly review, as a minimum, possibly more frequently in the event of operational, infrastructural or other changes linked to operations and policy,” says Twiga Aero’s Anichini. “The extra burden is now removed, and the way is opened for the implementation of a robust set of procedures commensurate with world-class ground operations – whether for an airline or GSP. Incidentally, the civil aviation authorities (CAA) have repeatedly spoken favorably on the procedures and concept of IGOM.”
According to Haddad, dnata stations perform a gap analysis to measure conformity levels and address any gaps that require alignment to IGOM as part of dnata’s quality management system.
“We continue to adopt, develop and maintain SOPs. We also recognize that there are operational differences between countries and airports that require local variations,” she says. “Adaptations are critical to reflect local airport regulations, equipment servicing, working environment (including language, different nationalities) and communication protocols. Likewise, as we service numerous customers across our extensive network, we need to complement these basics with specific requirements as per service level agreements (SLA) and airlines' GOMs.”
Swissport is reviewing the corporate SOPs every year aligning IGOM updates with its subject matter experts from eight different regions, Miyata explains.
“IGOM is a minimum recommendation, so the customizations happen according to risk assessment, aircraft types, type of GSE, infrastructure and customer airlines,” she explains.
“The most difficult part, when adopting IGOM, is to change the way of thinking of the airline/GSP staff. Chapter 1 – Passenger Handling Procedures – needs significant customization by airlines as it is the part that mostly covers the difference perceived by the common airline/GSP customers/passengers,” notes Abraham of Czech Airlines Handling.
Safety Benefits
In addition to efficiency benefits stemming from standardized procedure, there are also safety benefits that can be derived from common and standardized ground handling procedures.
“The workforce on the ramp of the world should not be challenged with multiple standards to achieve the same task for the same aircraft type. They have enough to think about in terms of the sheer number of procedural detail they need to remember in an unforgiving work environment,” says Anichini of Twiga Aero. “These professionals work in extreme weather ranging from -50 to +50 degrees C, they are exposed to blizzards and sandstorms, face floods and electrical storms and deal with heavy snow and volcanic eruptions. Do they really need to deal with an extra cone or chock on the same aircraft type just because the whim of a ground operations manager?
“Let’s put this into the right perspective and make sound, common, uniform standards that make it easy and possible to turn the aircraft around in good time and in a safe environment. The benefits are clear: simple operational process that are applied consistently across a network.”
“This global approach to standards and processes can remove in part some complexities to our frontline, from having too many procedures and ways of doings. It lays the foundations for safety requirements for the operations. It also simplifies training and enhances consistency to follow the same standards regardless of where we operate in the world,” adds dnata’s Haddad.
While the IGOM standards provide safety benefits for airlines and GSPs, adopting IGOM should also mean performing safety risk assessment with respect to the IGOM provisions.
“Airlines and GSPs adopting IGOM should perform safety risk assessment in accordance with their own internal procedures. Airlines and GSPs have a safety management system (SMS) in place and usually apply safety risk assessments within their respective processes. When adopting any relevant internal or external provisions, including IGOM’s, or any other procedural changes, it should always require risk assessment,” points out Abraham of Czech Airlines Handling.
“We conduct risk assessments before adopting our corporate SOPs and set even higher standards than IGOM’s, e.g. technical steps to be used for opening cargo doors,” adds Swissport’s Miyata. We set more detailed requirements according to our risk assessment.”
“Safety is the baseline in what we do, and there is an increasing focus for IGOM to incorporate risks assessments. At dnata, safety risk assessment is an integral part of our SMS, commonly used for introducing new equipment, technology, process changes or failures in the operations,” Haddad says. “For example, in the turnaround activities, a risk assessment was recently done to assess GSE suitability with safe operating requirements for servicing new aircraft type.
“We still need to have our own practices, work instructions and conform to airline specifics, for the staff to implement on the ground,” she continues. “We also keep monitoring our procedures to ensure the operational requirements are documented and correctly implemented with ISAGO based audits, although IGOM is not yet fully integrated to ISAGO.”
A Strategic Choice
There are indeed several benefits to be experienced by airlines and GSPs when implementing IGOM.
“The alignment of operational standards from IGOM with the new ISAGO standards makes going through the ISAGO audit a ‘snap’ in terms of identifying the documented standards and sharing them with the audit team. More importantly, migrating the standards and procedures from a GSP’s own to IGOM provides the company an opportunity to focus on what is important and eliminate the superfluous,” says Anichini of Twiga Aero. “Training courses that are based on the IGOM common standards are simplified and are easily and regularly revised yearly, in line with the IGOM publication cycle. This leads to conformance to airline standards – provided the airline has adopted IGOM – a ‘walk in the park’ exercise.”
Adopting, and more importantly, implementing IGOM makes good sense for a GSP because it simplifies the task of achieving consistency in operational service delivery.
“It makes it easy for a GSP to meet its customer’s requirements. Isn’t that what airlines are looking for?” Anichini continues. “And for airlines, adopting IGOM means ease of compliance, facilitated audits – if they choose to continue overburdening the ISAGO-registered GSPs with repetitive audits, and, more importantly, achieving a level of consistency across wide-spread networks, which are challenging to monitor.”
