I am ground staff for a certain low cost airline at LBA, and all I can say is that Servisair need to get their Ar$es into motion! I'm not sure if people are aware but Servisair do all the manual handling/baggage/marshalling/bus driving for every flight at LBA, with Jet2 ground staff covering passenger services & ramp duties for Jet2 flights only. Jet2 ramp finish at 11pm each evening with Servisair taking over, should there be a Ryanair aircraft in LBA comes to a standstill with Jet2/FlyBe having to wait for steps/busses etc.
Jet2 as a whole is extremely efficient on the ground as everything is in house and we all work as one team and get the job done well. The problem arises when more than 2 flights come down at the same time and there simply isn't enough Servisair staff to handle everything. As for the comments regarding baggage - it is infuriating, on many occasions we are waiting for up to 45 minutes for baggage to come off the aircraft, which puts a bad image on Jet2 when it is servisair staff who are slow to unload the aircraft. Yes it is a fair job to unload 200+ bags off a 757 with only a few staff but this problem is getting slowly worse.
The guys at Interserve who deal with the wheelchairs work their back sides off, they don't get the praise they deserve, yet again the problem lies with Servisair. Jet2 tell Interserve how many passengers requiring assistance there are on incoming flights, either the captain radios ahead or ground staff pass on details. Servisair don't seem to grasp this so on many occasions they are not aware of any passengers needing assistance on the KLM/bmi/Thomas Cook etc and if they are dealing with Jet2 passengers it can take a while before they are free to deal with the passengers they are unaware of. There are always 3 Interserve staff on duty but if they guys don’t know what passengers they are requiring to meet then it is common for them to appear unorganised. Jet2 and Interserve get annoyed with this situation as it is impacting both our operations.
There are many other things that Servisair do that seriously annoy passengers and more often then not Jet2 staff which results in a knock on delay for Jet2 flights. Some of the servisair staff are hostile towards Jet2 ground staff. Not many people will be aware of the set up regarding gates and stands at LBA, basically for stands 9,10 & 11 which are all walk on stands Gates 2, 3 & 4 respectively are used. For Airbridge 8 (Stand 8) Gate 7 is used (This is the only separate lounge at LBA) and for Airbridge 7 Gate 10 is used. On many occasions Servisair board Ryanair using two gates (Usually Gate 6 & gate 7) to board an aircraft on Stand 11. This results in aircraft on Stand 8 not having a gate to board the aircraft from, delaying aircraft, as well as Servisair occupying the whole walkway to stand 11, meaning to inbounds on Stand 9/10 cannot be disembarked. This will probably sounds like a load of gibberish to most but this severely restricts an already limited terminal and has caused confrontation between Servisair and Jet2 Duty managers.
A lot of the Servisair staff are really nice but their way of operating at LBA causes a unnecessary problems and reflects LBA badly from a passengers point of view. It is very frustrating as Jet2 staff know all too well that when a Ryanair comes in everything comes to a stand still. The Airport Duty Manager has got involved on several occasions and hopefully Servisair will sort out their act!!
