ISSUE FEATURES

World AnAlysis: SCANDINAVIA
For the purposes of this feature we have cast our net around Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.

We begin with Finland, and Tomi Viitanen, who is Chief Commercial Officer of ISS Finland.

He says, encouragingly, that the last 12 months have showed significant growth within the Finnish market, amongst his customers. In particular, traffic growth on the part of Blue1/SAS in the traditional markets, together with Norwegian in the low cost market, combined to increase his operational activity by 25%.


“Because of this traffic growth, ISS Aviation has invested over half a million euros in ground support equipment during last year.” he reveals.

Despite ISS’s northerly location, day to day handling activities continued very much as normal in the face of the natural elements experienced.

“Volcanic activity had a minor impact on the traffic to and from Finland and therefore had no great effect on our operations. Winter conditions were bad again, but we worked together with the airport authorities and therefore we could call last winter’s activity normal operations.”

Given the geographical problems, it’s encouraging to note that ISS has no problem when it comes to taking on staff; indeed, in general the Finnish labour market boasts plenty of well-educated personnel.

As ever, though, there are doubts over certain matters, in particular activities at Helsinki, which currently fields no fewer than six handlers, namely Northport & Barona, ISS Aviation, Servisair, Interhandling, Airpro & RTG and North Hub Services.

“It is our understanding that the airport has no direct way to reduce the number of current handling operators. Neither are we aware of any plans that this would happen. In future, the authority might come up with some competency-related requirements to limit the number and this has been under some preliminary discussion.

“We anticipate the number of handlers in Helsinki will lessen by two in the foreseeable future. Barona is planning to exit from its Finnair ramp handling operation and Swissport is about to take the operation over.

“Marketwise, a good number of handlers would be from two to four operators. We suspect that Helsinki market will eventually move closer to this optimal total through natural selection.”

Focus on Sweden
Menzies has two important operations in Sweden, namely Stockholm-Arlanda and Gothenburg-Landvetter. According to Menzies’ Commercial Manager, Simon Mueller, in 2010 and 2011 major contracts were renewed in Arlanda, including British Airways and Finnair, KLM/Air France and Turkish Airlines.

“In addition, Menzies Aviation added several airlines to the de-icing customer base. An important movement is the newly won ground handling and de-icing contract with the airberlin Group. Increasing our ground handling volume by four turns per day, winning airberlin and FlyNiki is also an important step for our strategic partnership with the oneworld group in Sweden. In Gothenburg, several important contracts, such as KLM/Air France and DHL were renewed. In addition, in our Gothenburg operation, we were able to attract new customers, including Norwegian Air Shuttle, British Airways and easyJet.

“The geographical situation of Scandinavia has specific requirements for GSE. It is not unusual to see the temperature drop below -25ºC, and this is accompanied by heavy snow and ice. Therefore, good maintenance and housekeeping is vital. Our internal workshop crews make sure that our GSE is ready for service round the clock, even during the most severe weather conditions. Because of this constant servicing, our GSE is in outstanding condition. In addition, we have started a refurbishment process to replace and renew critical equipment. This replacement and refurbishment programme includes main deck loaders, lower deck loaders, pallet transporters, toilet and water vehicles, GPUs and ASUs, tractors and beltloaders. With this programme, we feel prepared for the next tough winter to serve our customers without disruption. One focus of this programme is on GSE for cargo and integrator handling; together with our expertise in freighter handling, this programme enables us to strengthen our position in this business segment.

“During the 2010 volcanic eruptions, Scandinavia was badly affected by ash. The first and the last closures happened up north. We have learned a lot from those days and we were better prepared for this year’s ash cloud. With proper information and a warning system, we were prepared. However, because of international preparation, the chaos was not repeated and we were hardly affected.”

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