AERO Specialties

Extreme summer heat has, unfortunately, become an increasingly dangerous reality in the past several decades. More unfortunately, that temperature trend doesn’t appear to be going anywhere but up. And airside ground crews can be particularly vulnerable to the dangers of extreme heat. They work outdoors for much or most of the day, often on heat-holding blacktop. Working with or near the heated engines of aircraft tugs and dozens of other running pieces of ground support equipment (GSE) doesn’t help either. Dealing with the heat isn’t just an issue of being uncomfortable for those ground crews either. It can interfere with work, costing quite a bit of money and passenger time, but most alarmingly, it can endanger the physical safety and even lives of crew members and those who work around them. The following is a brief overview of some of those risks and ways in which members of those crews, and those managing them, can mitigate those risks. The Risks and Consequenc...

Communication is absolutely vital for any business’s efficiency, success, and often, safety. That’s doubly true in the aviation industry and with airside ground crews. It’s easy to see how communication failures involving personnel operating multi-ton aircraft tugs hauling multimillion dollar airliners can have some incredibly dire consequences. Unfortunately, the importance of communication is so often cited it can fade into the background and not be proactively discussed, improved, and implemented. Thankfully, there are ways to improve that communication and safety among ground crews and other aviation personnel. Importance and Benefits of Improved Communication In case the benefits, and necessity, of effective communication aren’t clear, they include more efficiency, better productivity, and a far safer work environment. And all of those things can mean more money. After all, the more efficiently work gets done, the more of it gets done. Efficiency also preserve...