Handlers call for a lighter touch

Hanging on the wall of Mohamed Hanno’s office in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis is a photograph of a vintage airliner, Handley Page HP.42 Hanno. The big British biplane was part of the fleet that flew the inter-war Imperial route, which passed through Cairo on the way to India , the Far East and Australia .
“It was named after one of my ancestors, Hanno the Navigator of Carthage,” joked the executive chairman of ASE Group, the ground-handling services provider that assures the efficient passage of millions of passengers through airports in Egypt , Morocco and the UAE.            
With a 200-strong workforce and more than 30 years’ experience, the company acts as the welcoming face of several leading European and Middle Eastern carriers as their passengers transit Cairo International, Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, Alexandria and other Egyptian airports.      
“Our biggest client is the Air Berlin Group, accounting for about 40 per cent of our revenues,” said Hanno. “We started with one flight to Hurghada in 1994, when they had just four aircraft. Now they have well over a hundred and we handle more than 160 flights per week.”

Germany provides two more customers – leisure carrier Hamburg International and low-fare operator Germanwings. Completing the customer list are Flydubai, NAS Air of Saudi Arabia, Aegean Airlines and LOT Polish.
“We have represented Flydubai and carried out passenger handling for them since they first entered service,” Hanno said. “We were one of their first stations when they were still on paper. Now we handle their daily flight to Alexandria and expect them to open another two destinations this year.”

NAS Air is supported on 22 flights a week to Alexandria and Assiut on the Nile . ASE provides Athens-based Aegean Airlines with station management, passenger handling, load control and ramp supervision for several flights a week to Cairo and Alexandria , and LOT Polish is supported on 16 flights a week to various destinations across Egypt .
Hanno takes pride in the fact that ASE was the first Egyptian handler to serve a Polish carrier. “We want to grow the business over the next two or three years but we won’t do it by trying to take market share from our competitors. I prefer to look for new opportunities in Europe or here in the Middle East ,” he said.
He believes ASE is in good shape for the challenge, pointing to a resilient performance during the recession, a new company headquarters under construction, and new service offerings in development.
“During the recession we were affected primarily by the collapse of Sterling Airlines – we’re still waiting in the creditors’ queue,” he admitted. “Some of our other airlines suffered to a lesser degree. But we see them more as partners than clients, so some sacrifices were made on our side and some on theirs and we maintained the same level of service. We took a long-term view.”
 
With the downturn now easing in the Middle East ASE is in an expansive frame of mind. The company is due to move into its purpose-built Sky Centre in one of the new settlements close to Cairo International in the middle of next year. And its 24X7 operations centre, currently in temporary accommodation in Helipolis, should move back to the airport soon to take up space vacated by Egyptair in Terminal 1.
The company is putting the finishing touches to two new service offerings – “At this point I can’t say any more because our competitors might grab the opportunity” – and is putting even more effort into its role as a leading advocate of standards for the ground-handling community.
Hanno is vice-chair of the IATA Ground Handling Council and is contributing to the newly launched effort to develop the IATA Ground Operations Manual (IGOM). The company helped to draft the standards underpinning the IATA Safety Audit Programme for Ground Operations (ISAGO) and has since won certification at four of its stations.

There’s one piece of regulation that the ASE boss would like to see the back of, however. “We need freedom in the provision of ramp services,” he declared. “At present only two entities – Egyptair and the Egyptian Aviation Services consortium – are permitted by law to work on the ramp. Our clients have to contract with one or the other. This kind of protectionism is no longer useful. Where there’s no competition there’s no incentive for improved quality and new services.”