When the Covid pandemic hit the aviation industry overnight, dnata was quick to act, reduce costs and align their business accordingly.
Now with signs of recovery picking up, in the UK and Europe particularly, Steve Allen explains why their ongoing investment plans in cargo facilities and innovative technologies are making dnata a problem-solver to airlines in an ever-changing industry.
GHI: Congratulations on your recent appointment as Executive Vice President. What is the company’s strategy over the next five years and what freshness are you aiming to bring to the role?
Steve Allen: A few weeks ago, we came up with a strategy, ‘Reconnecting a better world’, which has two major threads to it. Reconnecting means the whole of the industry is going to be building back up. So, we want to make sure that we are ahead of the game and we are there for our airline and travel customers to make travel as smooth as possible. We used to plan seasonally, but now we plan weekly because things are changing so fast. Because we have had the stability through the pandemic of knowing we will be here in the long term, we’ve also invested in things like technology, a massive cargo terminal at Heathrow, called dnata City East, and a new cargo facility in Manchester. So we have continued our investment in infrastructure and are ahead of the game in reconnecting operations.
The other side to reconnecting, which has come out of the pandemic and is already in process, but I think which has really been accentuated is communities working much more together, the importance of the environment and sustainability as well as the health and well-being of employees.
The ‘better world’ thinking springs from the notion that instead of going into the pandemic and coming out the same, we want to come out better than we were before, especially in the role that we have to play as a ground handler.
Increasingly, our customers are asking for our sustainability plans but also our staff want a purpose in what they are doing and rising to the challenge of working with communities on a charitable basis and focusing on the environment and looking after each other from a well-being perspective. Reconnecting to a better world is where we are headed. That’s the freshness I want to bring to the table.
GHI: What do you think it is going to take to get the industry back on its feet?
SA: It’s hard to plan as somewhere in the world there is a change in rules. The US, at the moment, seems to be taking a step backwards due to the number of Covid cases that has gone up. The situation in Australia is challenging. In the UK and Europe they seem to be moving forward. So, it’s a real turbulent recovery here but what I want to make sure that we are predicting what we can as much as possible and working closely with our customers. What I really like at the moment is that the industry is acting together as we are all in this together. Airlines are willing to accept that they need to share more information and that there might be staff shortages at one moment and these have to be offset with some other change of plans. We are only going to get the aviation industry back on its feet if we all work together.
See full interview in the October issue of GHI, 2021.
