Yep. good old Menzies - "Excruciating from Gate to Gate".

Seriously now - the Menzies folks on the ground at MAN, handling BA, are doing what they can with the resources they have. The individuals are working on minimum resources, with an arm tied behind their back, and they are clearly working hard to juggle the demands being placed on them.

I arrived on the 1402 one day last week, we pulled up on the "usual" stand 143 next to the flight an hour or so ahead of us on 141, which was returning as the 1405.

We got on stand, the jetway got attached, the chocks on and the ground power plugged up, and then the Menzies staff returned to dealing with getting the 1405 away. The person attaching the jetway on 1402 near enough ran back to 141. That's the level of pressure they are under. Only after the 1405 had been closed up would the Menzies crew start unloading the hold on 1402.

I personally really appreciate they broke off, came and got the 1402 "in" and unloading. It would have been easy to take the position of "Nope, busy with this 1405 departure, the 1402 passengers will just have to wait on board until someone is available. The aircraft is night-stopping. No rush."

It's like the SQ priority baggage issue mentioned up thread - I wouldn't be surprised if the below-wing team was short that day, and didn't have enough people to make a special run to reclaim/unload with the priority cans. Instead the crew just tipped the complete hold and brought it all up at once to reclaim, because if they didn't, they would have been penalised for being slow to turn the aircraft.

But really, the ground ops ought not be run on this "bare minimums" situation. But that's what you get when you have an oligopolistic market (very few handlers in the market really these days because of consolidation - Swissport, Menzies, Dnata being the bigger ones), and everyone trying to win business off each other by undercutting.