Originally Posted by
wmaciej
this kind of defeats the purpose of a station manager in my books 🤷♂️
Well, it depends on what you intend for station manager.
The concept of an airline rep overseeing all departures is well and truly endangered. There are airports that are sufficiently large, in terms of services, to have that (FCO or LIS spring to mind, or at least they were like that back in '18 and '19), either as a station manager or a customer services manager. But these days the station manager is mostly a contract manager, dealing with the GHAs, and all the other dozens of things that needs doing. Even when there's one, it's rare for this person to actually be at the aircraft side, or at least that's my experience.
It's definitely been a tidal change: when I started working in Operations I knew that one of the BUD duty managers personally drove the jetty to the plane, saw the MXP station manager at the check-in desk, and LIS was manned by BA. Now, it's all changed, with GHAs, at least in Europe. Airlines like FR and Wizz have set the trend; as far as I understand it, Wizz handles all their activities from HQ over in Budapest.