SEPANG, March 19 — Ground team officers at an airport and the work they do are never seen by most commercial flight passengers.
That is, until a mistake is made and one is left waiting longer than expected for one’s luggage, the luggage is damaged or safety is compromised.
Ramp loading supervisor Haliminizan Halim and ramp cargo officer Mohd Fazdly Mohd Zain are members of Ground Team RED (GTR) at klia2 who like their counterparts in other airlines make sure passengers will have one less thing to worry about during their travels.
Duties such as loading and unloading baggage, aircraft servicing and safety operation procedures fall under their daily checklist.
It’s a physically demanding job that requires officers to lift heavy loads of baggage and cargo that add up to a weight of seven or nine tonnes (7,000 kilogrammes to 9,000 kilogrammes) a day.
“Our office provides a gym and physiotherapy training. We exercise in our free time too with activities like jogging and badminton,” said Fazdly.
“We have to maintain our stamina because our work is very heavy-duty.”
Overcoming Mother Nature is also part of the job as the ramp officers brave the hot sun and heavy rain to get their duties done on time.
Fazdly and Haliminizan work on a tight schedule with an aircraft turnaround time of 25 minutes — this means they have less than half an hour to unload each plane upon arrival and prepare it for its next flight.
The pressure becomes even more intense when the ground team is faced with handling dangerous goods (DG) which could pose a serious threat to the plane and its passengers.
When coupled with a great sense of teamwork, the GTR officers work like well-oiled machines who make sure passengers can get to their destination safely and on time.
This sense of teamwork also led Fazdly to lend his support to the Penang division of GTR at Penang International Airport when flash floods battered the island in November 2017.
Over a three-day period, the team worked 18-hour shifts to serve 30,000 passengers, providing relief assistance to both passengers and Fazdly’s colleagues who were affected by the disruption.
“Some of the staff members couldn’t go back home after their shift due to the flood and some couldn’t even report for duty because their houses were filled with water,” said Fazdly.
“I went to Penang to help out with operations as they were very short on manpower.”
Haliminizan recalls a challenging incident in July 2018 where he had to handle a box containing DG on a flight bound for Tiruchirappalli.
“One of the loaders told me there was a box which felt unnaturally warm so I instructed them to remove it before informing security personnel,” he said.
“The security officer then asked for the package to be sent to the Aviation Security Office to be rescanned.”
After matching the parcel with the respective passenger, the team opened up the box to find a watch and lithium ion mobile phone batteries that had caught fire, leaving burn marks inside the package.
Had it not been for the vigilance and attentiveness of the ramp officers on duty, the parcel could have seriously compromised the safety of the passengers and crew on the plane.
The duo are also believers in the “four-seconds thinker” skill which helps them to think, plan, and execute operations quickly so emergencies can be dealt with in a timely manner.
Teamwork is at the very core of their career, a point that Haliminizan emphasised for potential candidates looking to join GTR.
“It’s a challenge and you need to be resilient because we have to endure all kinds of bad weather on the job. You have to be good at receiving and following instructions and have a great sense of teamwork.
“If you’re doing heavy-duty work without being a good team player, it’ll be a wreck,” he said.
