redpalmetto

After a long wait today for someone to activate the parking guidance on stand 519, I was wondering why that needs someone there, could that not be controlled remotely?
All he seemed to.do was turn on and set aircraft type

IrishNY

The stand needs to be visibly checked for debris and other FOD before they allow an aircraft to come onto the stand…the person that turns on the guidance is normally the person who drives the air bridge too so even if it was turned on remotely, you wouldn’t be getting off any quicker.

hfly

I remember the last year or two of T1, it took forever for them to open doors. The standard line was that when T5 opened they would have all this automation, etc and things would be quicker. I do not think that I have ever had a door quickly opened at T5 and the waits are longer..........

SW7London

Amazing there are so many reports about this issue at T5 - and have been for years - compared to other FT forums and their respective airlines and airports.

Pure incompetence that this is still an problem. The responsible manager is probably also the person in charge of preventing rats appearing in the T5 lounges so overall they are doing well.

13901

The stand guidance bit is just the first instalment of the arrival process. Basically, the issue at hand is that there isn't a ground crew (or the full crew hasn't assembled yet) in order to handle the aircraft. How it happens, generally speaking (I'm a bit out of the game so some details might be changing, and the naming convention will undoubtedly have morphed) is as IrishNY said. The person who turns on stand guidance (used to be the IRS, Integrated Ramp Supervisors) also drives the jetty and performs a couple other key functions.

So when the pilots say that no one is there to turn on the stand guidance, the reality is that BA LHR Ops is understaffed and can't keep up with the operation. Sometimes - they were a lot more before some changes in 2018/19, more on that later - you can't win: LHR Ops will man for an operation running more or less on schedule; if a plane arrives 30' early there's slack, but if they start becoming 2, or 3, or a whole wave... then it hits the fan. And I hated when the Niges would go "Well, we've done our bit to bring you nice and early but the company's caught unaware again"... when in reality they got a powerful jetstream and them and another 10 planes arrived 1h early. Hard to deal with that.

The other - and truer cause of the short-staffing issue, in my opinion - is that, in order to save some costs (remember Alex?) two roles have largely been merged into one. Once, the jetty driving was a task done by the dispatcher, "above" the wing. The baggage crew leader took care of the below the wing activities. Now the IRS, who is technically 'below' the wing, does the guidance, FOD check, drives the jetty, get the RTAD buggies, and a few more bits and bobs. If there's issues, that causes delays. ​​​​​​

That's correct! The FOD thing is just a LHR thing. If you go anywhere else, that's just not done, at least not before every departure. I really wonder what sort of extra layer of safety is given by Geoff eyeballing the concrete of stand 565 on a rainy Tuesday at 0500 AM, but hey ho.

Waterhorse

A damaged, personal baggage tag, with a metal clasp that falls off a bag (and believe me I’ve seen plenty on a walk round) going into an engine as you taxy in, is going to ruin everyone’s day. It can FOD the engine, causing a potential cost running into the millions of pounds if it means an engine change is required, at the least it takes the aircraft out of service for a lot longer than the FOD plod takes to complete. Just because you are unaware that the check is being done at other airports does not invalidate its importance at LHR. Similarly because it doesnt happen very often doesn’t mean the risk is reduced, that’s just (to use a horrible NASA phrase) normalising deviance. If you toss a coin 19 times and every time you toss it, it comes down heads, the next coin toss it’s still a 50/50 chance that it will come down heads. Risk doesn’t change just because you’ve got away with it a few times.

My bugbear with stand guidance is that we often approach the gate and it’s not until we have to come to a halt on the taxiway that the ground crew get out of the hut to do the FOD plod and turn the guidance on. This means using a lot more power to get going again, all because they can’t get out of the hut 1 minute earlier. Hey ho, rant over.

tuonopepper

I'd assumed that someone did set the aircraft type, however on arrival on Tuesday we had to wait for a stand Marshall. The auto guidance was showing STOP, type not detected (might have been recognized), or words to that effect so I'm now assuming it's automatic?

13901

I don't dispute its impact, but I do dispute the usefulness of checking after every departure. Even the FAA mandates only a daily inspection. And, frankly, it's not like it is done very well, especially as you said below. I'd much rather have some proper cleaning every day, with mechanical means, than some H&S cinema performed "just because". Instead the very opposite happens.

There was a trial, using AI and high-definition cameras, to detect FOD. I don't know how that ended.

It's thankfully no longer my job, but if I were you I'd report, report, report and report this. To the COO. BA LHR Ops have terrible performance because they have poor management and very little enforcement of the rules. Certain behaviour just wouldn't fly at Cobalt, at DNata or Menzies. Even at Swissport. But the difference is that, there, if a report was made, brown stuff would start flying down on the managers responsible to handle the operation.

chistery

So what does this "fod plod" look like? Having sat staring out of the window waiting for the guidance system to be turned on, I've never seen anyone do anything that looks like a check of the area?

13901

From memory is a walk down the edge of the stand and back. Or something like that.

The Ginge

Is the BA ground operation at T5 still quite split between jobs, ie someone won't do something as that's someone else's job? I know other handling agents have many more people trained to do multiple tasks, so not one person would check the stand and switch on guidance. Coming in to T5 out the window if on same side whilst waiting for guidance I've seen multiple staff on stand but they have to wait for the one person to switch guidance on. At other places you'd have all those people there also able to switch on the guidance.

BOH

Welcome to one of the last bastions of highly union controlled operations. BA, London Underground, mainline rail and (surprisingly), exhibition stand construction are the remaining few of these 1970s dinosaurs. Where the majority of things are seemingly done in the interest of the workers, not the paying customer.