Our CEO dons a high vis to make sure our flights get away on time

At the centre of this commotion are our turnaround officers. Their job is to oversee everything that happens on an aircraft while it’s on the ground. They’re responsible for making sure our flights depart safely and on time while delivering impeccable customer service. It’s a high pressured environment where anything can and does happen, so it couldn’t be more important.

Last month, we sent our CEO Craig Kreeger ‘back to the floor’ to work alongside one of our turnaround officers at Heathrow and went along to see how he got on.

Everything was going well. The cleaning and catering were done. Crew checks and fuel uplift were complete. The baggage and cargo were loaded, and the passengers had starting boarding early. But, like we said, things can go south very quickly … Craig takes up the story:

“When you work in an office, you can sometimes forget what if feels like to be at the airport and experience the whole hustle and bustle of the ramp. An awful lot comes together in the role that Paul does and you get to see all it takes to make it happen.

“This was an interesting flight to observe because at 20 minutes before departure it turned from a straightforward, simple flight, to a complicated one with a medical offload. That involved caring for a customer who was too sick to travel, removing their bags and making the necessary changes to the load sheet. Despite all this, the aircraft still pushed back a minute early.

“I was so impressed with how quickly all this happened. These guys found the bags in seven or eight minutes. I saw the customer dealt with in a very humane way, with transport back to town, advice on what they needed to do to be ready to fly, and offer to rebook them. We got the airplane away on time, all credit to Paul, and demonstrated our values with our customers. So in my mind, I got to see our team do what our team does best.”

Paramount for our teams is making sure our customers get to where they want to go, safely, on time, with their bags. “This job comes with a lot of responsibility,” Craig continues. “There’s a huge amount of checking and double checking of the data entries because weight and balance are so important. Those responsible for creating and carrying out the flight rely on accurate information and need to know that it’s compliant with our legal and safety requirements.”

“In many ways Paul acts as a central hub, solving the day to day problems that can threaten all those things. The fact we lead the on-time departure leagues for longhaul carriers at Heathrow suggests we’re doing a pretty good job here, and that’s thanks to a great team effort across the airline. But that’s just viewing our airports through a purely operational lens. On this flight I saw the human side too, and I personally felt a great sense of accomplishment when looking at my watch to see the aircraft taking off a minute early.”

Craig has promised to do more of these back to floor days and we look forward to sharing his behind the scenes observations in coming blog posts. A massive thank you to Paul and the Heathrow team for hosting Craig.