Business networking works best in person. Both Jettainer and Airport College International attended the 32. ULD CARE conference in Montréal last week, where the focus is on ULD Compliance, Airworthiness, Regulations and Education. Education is what Airport College International does best and Jettainer which has a strong interest in reducing damage risks to ULDs, quickly recognised the benefits of a commercial cooperation: A deal was made there and then.
"Jettainer is delighted to enter into this agreement with Airport College International," Director Global Operations Frank Muehlenkamp stated. "Training is a vital component when
raising awareness of safe handling of ULDs and reducing damages and costly repairs." Jettainer GmbH, (a subsidiary of Lufthansa Cargo AG) currently manages around 90,000 units for a total of
25 airlines at over 450 airports worldwide. Positioning, maintaining and servicing the ULDs is included in Jettainer’s responsibility, so the interest in ensuring the units are handled correctly
is high. Damaged units not only lead to high repair costs, but – more importantly – are a direct risk to flight safety.
Airport College International, a strategic IATA partner, offers a complete portfolio of training safety, security and service courses for airlines and airport ground handling agents involved in
logistics, and which can be used online or in classrooms. “With this training service, our clients can efficiently and flexibly train their staff and maintain competences required by airlines
and authorities.”
Regarding the Jettainer cooperation, Airport College International CEO Pertti Mero said, "We believe that this cooperation provides us a unique possibility to work closely with Jettainer to
promote and sell our online Unit Load Device (ULD) Operations training courses."
“This cooperation intends to bring training to organization levels, especially to the personnel working in daily ULD operations. Our aim is to bring the training to airlines, ground handling
agents and freight forwarders. Well trained operational staff, with full support from managers and executives, can work safely, reduce damages and ensure proper handling of ULDs.”
From Panellists to Partners
Both company representatives, Frank Muehlenkamp, Director Global Operations at Jettainer, and Pertti Mero, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Airport College International, had been
panellists on the “Putting ULD CARE Solutions to Use” panel earlier in the week, on 17 SEP 19, at the Montreal-held ULD CARE conference. There, Pertti Mero had promoted the three free
ULD60seconds videos, created together with ULD CARE and available in 15 languages, and pointed out that the industry already has all the tools necessary for online training. Airport College’s
material is even used by the FAA when training their own staff.
Frank Muehlenkamp pointed out that “the days of three weeks’ classroom/onsite trainings are over, because everything has to be quicker, faster now, and training has to be quicker, too.”
That Jettainer is no newcomer to awareness trainings is evident by the promotion of the “Lucky” AKE88888 – a container that set off on its journey at last year’s ULD CARE conference and has since
been on 86 flights through 18 countries on all six continents – all the while damage-free.
Needed are more ‘ULD-X-Perts’
Frank Muehlenkamp explained that brochures promoting the ten golden rules of careful ULD handling had flown with the container and that the stations it had been through had all improved in their
container handling. “Putting huge emphasis on the proper handling of ULDs as well as training and qualifying the staff adequately is the key influencing factor to prevent damages from
happening. In this way, it is possible to save repair costs and keep the assets in service,” he explained.
Jettainer’s focus has been on training staff to become so-called “ULD-X-Perts”, so the cooperation with Airport College International is a logical next step. Whilst Pertti Mero believes that
offline classroom trainings will always have their merits, he confirmed that the Airport College “creates eLearning courses together with our clients – ground handling companies, airlines,
and some training institutes.”
Both parties also agreed that the emphasis needs to be on refresher trainings, too, as they are often not given despite situations changing in the meantime.
If you want to know more about what the Airport College International offers, check out their website: https://airportcollege.com/courses-and-services/
Brigitte Gledhill
Write a comment
Rayhan ahmed (Monday, 23 September 2019 17:18)
I agree education is the most important function to teach people in
Airline and ground handling industry
How to take care of uld containers which are part of the aircraft not
Separate as some people fear to think .