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You cannot read the many excellent articles published by GHI in 2024 without noticing that the two most important and transformative changes in the ground handling industry in 2024 are the growth of hi-tech in virtually every aspect of aircraft, passenger and cargo handling, and the growth of synthetic fuels and electric ground support equipment.
Together hi-tech and AI, and electrification and synthetic fuels will totally transform airport ramps, terminals and cargo warehouses by the 2030s. Let’s be ready!
What is the driving force behind these changes? We at Edinburgh Midwest Aviation Partners (EMAP) believe it’s a combination of government pressure to be environmentally friendly, growing labour shortages, airlines constantly seeking lower costs and on-time performance, and the economic driver of greater efficiency now through hi-tech and AI, and the ever growing competition not just between the many multi-national and regional ground handlers, but with the rise of new, smaller and aggressive competitors, many of whom are privately owned by former long-time industry executives and managers.
The winners will be those companies able to increase efficiency, improve safety, adapt to the new technology, and offer airlines and airport authorities quality service at low cost utilising energy efficient ground support equipment.
The losers will be those who fight change, who cannot raise the funds to purchase new equipment or develop or purchase or license new technology.
Hi-tech and AI
Airlines and airports have invested heavily in technology for “above the wing” passenger handling functions, with J.D. Power now evaluating the use of digital tools as one of the core dimensions of passenger satisfaction.
In its 2024 North America Airline Satisfaction Study, a key finding was that airlines which provided “user-friendly digital tools” for booking, check-in, and customer service received higher ratings with features like mobile apps, online check-in, and real-time notifications about flight status and gate changes being most appreciated.
Unfortunately the same levels of innovation and customer connectivity and satisfaction have yet to reach “below the wing” activity with a significant gap existing between the desire of airlines to be able to manage ground service functions in real-time over scalable and standardised digital platforms which can integrate with core airline systems and the ability of the handling community to provide that functionality.
There are many reasons for this with cost-pressures and a lack of supplier neutrality being thorny issues.
Ultimately airline customers are reluctant to commit to technology implementations that could make them reliant on a single handler or would result in significant disruption and cost to change.
As a consequence two trends currently dominate. Firstly legacy systems inherited from airline outsourcing, and inconsistent, non-scalable systems and processes, including paper, whiteboards and spreadsheets, and the use of outdated and highly “mandraulic” technologies, to plan and manage complex ground operations remain commonplace, and with information exchange highly reliant on various combinations of voice, SMS, email, radio and paper transmissions.
Secondly, a large number of small and disparate technology providers have emerged focused on the provisions of single airport, customer and supplier specific solutions.
From this group no dominant industrywide platforms suitable for managing or consistently integrating a wide variety of ground service technologies across multiple handlers, airlines, services and geographies to scale have yet to emerge despite the increasing availability of digital solutions and IoT connectivity providing the potential to do so.
With airlines and their ground service providers operating on the finest of operational and financial margins, successfully harnessing the use of digital technologies, IoT, SaaS and ultimately AI and predictive solutions represent a major opportunity for the industry to achieve major leaps in productivity and efficiency, particularly in turnaround management.
As an example, one sector that has seen significant change in the last few years is into-plane fuelling where the scale adoption of QT Technologies’ fuel ticket automation product by the major US airlines and their into-plane fuel providers is driving the elimination of paper-ticketing and enabling significant system and management efficiencies to be achieved in that market.
Others involved in developing technology driven solutions for aircraft turn management, telematics, contract management and billing, resource and workforce planning, quality control, asset tracking, network monitoring and cargo management include Damarel Systems, Assaia, Rsmart Aviation Software, Proveo, Targa Telematics, INFORM, Amadeus, NetForecast and Apptronik, but these are just a few examples from the significant IT eco-system that has begun to emerge.
From this significant developmental eco-system the potential now exists for consolidated neutral providers of ground service focused technologies capable of sitting between airlines, airports and ground service providers and providing consistent and scale overview regardless of location, customer or supplier to emerge.
This would mirror the way in which the ground service sector itself emerged from airline and airport outsourcing to create a truly independent global industry.
SAF and electrification
To date, alternative fuels remain expensive and are in limited supply. Consequently they only represent around 0.5% of aviation fuel currently utilised but this share is expected to grow dramatically over the next decade driven by both environmental and cost factors.
Providers include Neste, Air bp (e-SAF), Shell, Repsol, Phillips 66, Norsk e-fuel, OXCCU and SAFOne.
While ground handling and, in particular, into-plane fuelling companies will largely follow the lead of their airline customers, anticipating how these changes and regulatory requirements will impact equipment and service requirements will be critical to managing the transition to new fuel alternatives.
While it may be a decade or longer for electric cars to take over the highways (and certainly much longer for electric aircraft to take over the airways), electrification is making huge headway in the ground support industry, as it is “green energy”, which satisfies the demands of local, provincial/state and national governments.
Here, we have to give huge credit to GSE manufacturers, their retailers and suppliers, as well as airport authorities.
This article was published in the February 2025 issue of Ground Handling International, click here to read the digital edition and click here to subscribe.
