Cypriot Eagle at Larnaca Airport

Hello people,

I know its been ages to write a thread, and I dissappeared once again from the forum. I managed to get some time to make a small comeback… and write about my new life.. a life different as I ever had. I am no longer a student.. I am an employee.. employed in a dream place that sometimes can be a nightmare.

I managed to find a job, a seasonal job at a Ground Handling company in Larnaca Airport. The name of the company is “2Serve Powered by Aeolos”…. “2 Serve” in short. I joined the company late April 2004.

Initially I began performing Sorting and Clearance functions, now they shifted me in operating ground dispatching duties. My training for my new duties started today. I know, I am over-qualified for this job and the money i get is peanuts. However, experience-wise this job is fundamental and crucial. I get to know the real action at the lowest end of our pyramid, so that when and if I ever manage to climb the latter I know what is going on at the lowest ends. Learning from experience makes us wiser as it supplements the theory that we learned and also makes us more practical in solving day-to-day air transport problems.

When I am working, I spend most of time when I am working at Sorting Area. Sorting Area is the area where departing luggages come out after passing through x-ray screening and are distributed according to flight. I supervise and co-ordinate the workers to ensure that they are placing the luggages on the correct trolleys or containers for the airlines we ground handle and I later send them to the correct aircraft. It is easy when you are dealing with one or two flights simultaneously. Things get worse when you are sorting 5 flights out of the three luggage belts Larnaca Airport currently has, another two flights are loading luggages therefore the drivers come sceaming for their luggages as they are in a hurry and the luggage belt system, the high-tech system crashes and sends the luggages in a non-unform pattern (e.g. expecting luggages of BLX639 out of belt 2 and the system is sending luggages on belts 1 and 3…) imagine if 14 more flights minimum are check-in at the same time and all have the same problem!!!!

Sorting at Larnaca Airport sounds like a nightmare…it is a nightmare, especially on a Sunday as all the charters arrive, but even on Monday’s it can get bad. On Sunday, I was working at Sorting and one of the newcomers joined me half-through the shift and as soon as he saw what was going on he got shocked.. i told him “welcome to Hell” :Ppp i dont know if he resigned or not. I havent seen him today.

However, Sorting is exciting and thrilling. If you like action-packed job where everything can happen and you need to be prepared to solve whatever problems may appear even on last minute.. this is the job to be… (the problem is relatively little money and roaster shifts!!) It needs management skills interpersonal skills (esp. with the workers as you need to win their respect to be willing to help you), and luck skills. You are always on the move because if you are not, you are loosing the game. I have Mastered and Commander to a 95% extent the Sorting… I am the Lord of the Sorting Area! :Pp some workers there call me CowBoy but i dont know why. Perhaps this is because i like during off-peak times to stand on a trolley and watch aircrafts that are departing or arriving.

Despite the nightmares scenarios that I outlined in the previous paragraphs working at Larnaca Airport can also be fun. Everything can happen both negative.. but also possitive. I noticed that airport employees especially ground dispatchers always must chase something on the tarmac.. some are chasing the lavatory service; others are chasing their papers because jet blast may blow them away. others are chasing the cargo and some others are chasing a bus full with passengers as the busdriver confuses the stand (this happened last week on an Helios Airways flight bound to Athens…. the aircraft was on stand 1 and the busdriver passed right in front of the aircraft and missed it.. as a result the passengers got a free ramp-tour.. well some passengers got annoyed because of this :P)…

I spoke a lot about Sorting yet I failed to speak about Clearance. Clearance is basically filling the General Declaration forms of arriving and departing aircraft and distributing them to the appropriate authorities within the airport (like Incoming and Outgoing immigration, the airport operations, the incoming health centre and the customs department)

So this is the reason why I disappeared. Roaster shifts, changed my life pattern. I dont have steady 5 day work schedule from 9 to 6 and offs during weekend. My schedule can be example 4:30 to 12:30 on Monday and later on Tuesday 19:00 to 03:00 early Wednesday’s. If any aircraft are delayed then the shift can extend up to six o clock in the morning…

I hope I managed to give you some information about how life is in an airport. When I gain some experiences on ground dispatching I will also write a thread about them. If you have also some experiences working in an airport please write them below…

Kind Regards