G R O U N D H A N D L I N G
Above: FBO Riga opened its
business aviation terminal
at Riga International Airport
in 2015
“The Directive has
worked pretty well,
but there are problems
with how some member
states are applying it”
Pekka Hietanen, policy officer, directorgeneral
BUSINESS AIRPORT INTERNATIONAL A P R I L 2 0 2 0 | 57
new licenses that apply to anyone who provides services
airside. “One size will not fit all,” he says.
“But we also need to push with the commission that we
have to go to the smaller airfields. If you go to those and
find you are restricted because of regulation, that seems
counter-productive. If we can’t get access to safe ground
handling services in those second-tier airports, local
economies and businesses will suffer.
Veisa agrees that safety is paramount in ground handling
operations. She says, “There has to be more oversight of
the safety of flight handling. When we are training the staff of
two handlers, we notice positions change a lot. We have to
train them all year round. And we don’t know the quality of
services we can supply to our customers.
“Guaranteeing safety is very hard. If we could change the
directive it would solve this.”
Safety changes
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has taken on
the management of safety standards in ground handling in
Europe. The EASA Basic Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 was
amended in 2018 to cover several new areas, including
ground handling. This has extended the Agency’s mandate
to regulate ground operations and has triggered a series
of rule-making activities to develop a set of regulations for
ground handling operations. EASA’s new regulations will not
apply to airports that handle less than 10,000 passengers
a year. The Agency is devising the rules over the coming
months and plans to publish a draft set by October this
year. This will be followed by a consultation workshop in
November. The result of the consultation will be published
by the end of 2021.
Adina Szonyi, regulations assistant of air operations,
EASA says, “Instead of having lots of different types of
safety regulation there will be only a single piece
of regulation. The benefits include that training
requirements can be standardized. Selfhandling
aircraft operators will be able
to integrate ground handling into their
management system.”
The European business aviation
sector has reacted broadly positively
to EASA’s involvement in ground
handling. However, industry standards
for safety in handling service
already exist in the shape of IS-BAH
(International Standard for Business
Aviation Handling). Marc Pieters,
director of quality, EHS (environment
health and safety) and aviation security in
Europe for Jet Aviation says that competent
authorities have already inspected Jet Aviation’s
safety management systems, which are done to ISBAH
standards and were impressed. Pieters says, “From
an operations point of view, we already have standards
and we expect that these will be recognized by EASA. We
for mobility and transport at
the EU Commission