The High Cost of Low Pay Training

Sometimes we don't realize that the lowest paid person holds just as much power in their position as the highest paid person in the company, just in different ways. This is especially true when analyzing the responsibilities of line service technicians and other ground crew working in business aviation. On any given day, one line service person can move hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of business jets, but too often, their position isn't given the training and respect it deserves.

According to the Flight Safety Foundation, 27,000 ramp accidents and incidents happen in the aviation industry each year. For the airlines, ramp accidents cost major airlines worldwide $10 billion a year. In business aviation, ground events consistently cause the most damage to aircraft each year. Aircraft towing and ramp accidents resulting in aircraft damage can delay or cancel flights and be a major cause of flight schedule disruptions in business aviation. Many costs are uninsured and estimated at over $100 million per year in direct costs.

To make it even worse, most aircraft damage events occur away from the operator's home base, where the consequences are more difficult to handle. Consequences can include the need for extensive repairs and an immediate requirement for alternate transportation. Though rare, injuries can be a significant consequence to ground service personnel or bystanders. Most events are preventable by employing precautionary measures, utilizing patience, and carefully handling the aircraft to avoid personnel injury and costly repairs.

Ground Handling Damage

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) reports that 48% of respondents said their company has had one to three ground incidents or close calls over the last three years. The sources of aircraft ground handling damage occur in these four segments:

• 50% are from hangar rash damage
• 33% occur while towing
• 10% damage from ground vehicle
• 7% damage during taxiing

Coordinating movements on the ground is vital to ensuring the safety of passengers, aircraft, and other ground crew members that service aircraft, but often this safety-sensitive role begins without structured training and is tasked to whoever is on duty. FBOs are often working with skeleton line service crews and, without structured basic indoctrination, tribal knowledge (good and bad) is the method of passing information on to the new hire. Knowledge of how to accomplish tasks is given, too often without explaining why. These missing layers of training become apparent when mixed with all the variables of ramp operations and can result in a lack of full situational awareness and inappropriate actions.

Towing Causal Events

Following are examples of towing causal event categories, all of which have the potential of occurring in the hangar or on the ramp:

• Maneuvering errors - a towed aircraft striking a parked aircraft.
• Torque-link connected - damaged landing gear leg or nose wheel steering system due to failure to disconnect the nose landing gear torque link prior to towing.
• Incorrect towbar installation - aircraft typically struck the tow vehicle.
• Broken towbar - failure to inspect the towbar before usage may result in an unnoticed damaged/weak towbar and a potential for a tow vehicle and aircraft event.
• Parking brake left on - the aircraft parking brake was not released, and usually, the parking brake is damaged.
• Turn radius exceeded - damage to the nose landing gear leg or nose wheel steering may result.
• Chocks removed too early - the aircraft rolled into another aircraft after the chocks were removed, but before the towing began.
• Improper tug - the aircraft rolled into the tug due to the selection of insufficient power on the tow vehicle which causes the towbar shear-pin to break and disconnect from the aircraft.
• Tow vehicle is left with brake off - results in the tug rolling away from its initial position with the aircraft still connected and the potential to encounter personnel, other aircraft/vehicles, or objects.
• Towbar hit aircraft - the tow vehicle operator inadvertently struck the aircraft with the towbar while connecting to the aircraft.

Learn-as-you-go has been the culture, but with the rising costs of insurance, there is external pressure on the industry to reverse the trend of unstructured training. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) backs up these demands in its general guidelines that, "prior to an employer requiring an employee to perform a task, s/he must be trained in the proper performance of that task…the employer must ensure the employee is made aware of any hazards inherent with the job function and the use of proper personal protective equipment (PPE)." If the person giving the training has not been professionally trained either, the cycle cannot be broken or, worse yet, safety culture spirals downward.

Hazardous Materials

14 CFR 139.321 refers to the handling and storing of hazardous substances and materials. Anyone working as a line service technician is handling hazardous substances, and not following standards has consequences—both for safety and financial costs/fines. Creating a structured training program sounds daunting, but long term, the effort will pay off if even if one accident or incident is prevented.

Advanced Aircrew Academy can take it one step further and customize the training to your specific general operating manuals, processes, and procedures. No matter how you decide to set up ground training, here are some important topics that you should consider:

• Hazardous Materials
• Fuel Handling / Quality Control / Operations (fuel farm)
• Ramp and Hangar Safety and Security
• Fire Safety / Emergency Procedures
• Runway Incursion
• Safe Towing Practices / Best Practices

All personnel involved in aircraft movement are responsible for a high degree of safety, but that can't happen if initial and recurrent training is not of the highest degree.

For more information on the 120+ training modules available for your flight operations, contact info@aircrewacademy.com or go to www.aircrewacademy.com.

Reference list:

https://www.aviationpros.com/ground-handling/ground-handlers-service-providers/ramp-operations-training/article/21155331/training-a-new-line-service-technician-keep-them-safe-while-they-learn-the-business

https://flightsafety.org/toolkits-resources/past-safety-initiatives/ground-accident-prevention-gap/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666691X23000246

https://nbaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TSFA_GroundHandlingTaxiIncidents.pdf