Birthdays and big business goals at Korean Air
Posted Date: 15/05/2009
Issue: Airline Ground Services June 2009
Publication: Airline Ground Services
Ground operations is considered to be one of the most important business divisions for Korean Air. “We currently maintain about 50% of ground handling in house,” explains Cheol Soo Oh, General Manager of the Ground Handling Agreements Team at Korean Air. Jo Murray find out more from this airline come handler as Korean Air celebrates its 40th birthday
AGS To what extent has Korean Air kept its ground operations in house? Do you maintain that passenger, baggage, ramp and cargo handling is such an important part of your business that you prefer to have teams of Korean Air staff undertaking the majority of this work at airports where this is possible or have you pursued an outsourcing strategy?
CSO Korean Air provides every service that is needed for ground operations, such as passenger, cargo, ramp, maintenance, catering and fuelling, in various airports in Korea. In order to manage manpower efficiently and to provide customers with professional service, we have outsourced some parts of our ground operations to the specialised subsidiaries.
KAS (Korea Airport Service), a subsidiary of Korean Air which is specialised in ramp handling services, provides Korean Air and its customer airlines with both ramp and baggage handling services.
For passenger handling, Air Korea (AK), a passenger specialised subsidiary established by KAS in 2008, offers various services to both Korean Air and its customer airlines from check-in and boarding services to lounge services as well as special passenger handling. This includes passengers with tight connections, unaccompanied minors, the elderly and passengers with disabilities.
While AK mainly provides passenger services of customer airlines, Korean Air focuses on its own passenger handling and that of some other airlines.
Ground operations are considered to be one of the most important business divisions and we currently maintain about 50% of ground handling in house.
AGS For passenger and baggage check- in, to what extent have you worked with the Skyteam alliance to pursue a common approach to passenger and baggage handling?
CSO Korean Air, one of the founding members of Skyteam alliance, provides customers with diversified benefits by sharing Skypass, our frequent flyer programme, with other members of the alliance. Furthermore, Korean Air has been participating in Skyteam co-location project at several airports worldwide to offer a unified and a qualified service to customers.
AGS Have you been particularly cutting edge with the use of new technology to streamline the airport experience for passengers?
CSO To improve operational efficiency as well as customer convenience, Korean Air continues to develop new technologies. For instance, passengers can now start their travels hassle-free by using the online check-in service. Online check-in is available from 4 hours to 24 hours before the scheduled departure time of the flight. Any passenger holding valid international flight e-tickets and travelling to visa-not-required destinations is eligible to use this service and just needs to log on to www.koreanair.com to start the process.
Also, kiosks are available at domestic and overseas stations such as Incheon, Busan, Gimpo and Narita etc.
AGS Where you outsource passenger and baggage check-in, do you prefer to outsource this work to alliance airline partners, local niche handlers or to multinational handlers?
CSO When it comes to choosing ground handlers for overseas stations, our priority is always “quality” and “cost efficiency.” However, if every condition of the candidates is at the same level, a Skyteam member may be considered as a priority candidate.
AGS How do you keep track of passenger and baggage handling service levels?
CSO In order to maintain and upgrade services quality, Korean Air draws up a service level agreement (SLA) with ground handlers. The SLA covers overall standard requirements from on-time operations to the handling of irregular operations.
To ensure internal service quality, Korean Air has adopted a quality assurance programme. Every staff member must achieve a certain level of scores before undertaking his/her role.
AGS How do you ensure safety on the ramp when handling the aircraft? Do you have your own teams in place at as many locations as possible? What is your preferred approach?
CSO Safety is always our top priority in all business divisions. To ensure safety on the ramp, Korean Air operates a dedicated ramp control team at its headquarter offices. Sixty Flight Masters (FM) – Korean Air’s headquarters staff specialised in ramp services – are placed at Incheon and Gimpo airports who manage ramp safety based on the check list. In the overseas stations, Korean Air’s Station Managers, who have completed FM training courses, manage overall ramp operations as an FM. Also, as safety is one of the main clauses of the SLA, our ground handlers have to make sure that their services meets the required level.
AGS Do you buy your own ground support equipment like tugs, loaders, dollies, etc? Does this equipment come with a ramp handling contract? Do you have a rolling investment programme?
CSO KAS, a subsidiary of Korean Air, purchases all ground support equipment and Korean Air pays for the use of the equipment based on the contract.
KAS has long-term expansive investment programme in ramp equipment. In spite of the world’s economic crisis, KAS has not stopped replacing old equipment with new, and has plans to invest more in purchasing key equipment, like towing tractors, this year.
AGS Do you think you will pursue different strategies with regard to ground services in the future? Will you take more in house or pursue more outsourcing? Will you tighten up SLAs or are you happy with your contractual arrangements? Will you pursue more economies of scale?
CSO In order to keep a high level of service quality and economies of scale, Korean Air balances outsourcing with in-house handling for ground services. While providing our own service at major domestic/overseas stations in such as Incheon, Gimpo, Cheju, Busan, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong, we outsource ground handling at most of the overseas stations as well as minor domestic stations.
As contractual agreements do not guarantee standard service quality, Korean Air aims to draw up SLAs with all ground handlers worldwide to secure a quality service.
AGS We understand you have a catering organisation. How extensive is this operation?
CSO Korean Air is a major player in airline catering. With 39 years of professional experience in the airline catering industry, it provides 33 customer airlines with over 40,000 meals for 120 international flights per day. In fact, 1,500 different kinds of dishes across Korean, Asian, Western and other cuisines are available every day.
We continue to achieve high productivity and efficiency in our catering operation with one of the largest state-of-the-art catering facilities including various cutting-edge systems, such as a bin conveyor system, a monorail system and a vacuum waste disposal system.
By implementing a quality control system with strict hygiene standards, every meal and service complies with IATA food safety and HACCP standards.
