Alaska touts improved ramp record

Menzies Aviation and Alaska Airlines in January vowed to improve ramp operations at Sea-Tac Airport after a flurry of accidents alarmed travelers and tarnished the companies' reputations.

Mission accomplished — mostly.

Menzies and Alaska reported Thursday that only one Alaska plane has been damaged at Sea-Tac since February, a rate of 0.2 incidents per 10,000 takeoffs. The industry norm is 3 incidents per 10,000 takeoffs.

"We've had a significant and sustained improvement ... from a safety standpoint and from a performance standpoint," said Glenn Johnson, Alaska senior vice president.

Alaska outsourced its Seattle ramp and baggage-handling duties to Menzies in May 2005 after talks on a contract for 471 union workers broke down.

The airline quickly experienced transition pains. Flight delays and lost bags soared throughout the summer.

Those problems declined in the fall, but ramp accidents reported to the Port of Seattle increased.

Then, on Dec. 26, an Alaska MD-80 en route to Burbank, Calif., depressurized shortly after leaving Sea-Tac. A Menzies employee had bumped the plane with a baggage cart before takeoff but did not report the damage. A hole opened in the weakened fuselage when the plane reached 20,000 feet.

The jet made an emergency landing at Sea-Tac and no one was injured.

Days later, another Alaska jet was damaged when a Menzies worker inadvertently put a tug into gear and pushed the plane into a passenger jetway.

Menzies, which is headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, and handles ground operations at nearly 100 airports worldwide, flew six safety experts to Seattle and conducted a top-to-bottom, 90-day review.

Thursday's briefing summarized the results, but Johnson said the review has become a continuous process.

Menzies has made several changes. It has organized ramp workers into teams, so they no longer work with different colleagues and managers each day; it has begun training six workers at a time as safety monitors, who then spend six weeks conducting audits; and it has implemented a team-based bonus system to motivate employees to work collectively to improve safety and efficiency.

Another busy summer season is about to begin, so Menzies is not resting easy, said John Fulford, a Menzies vice president:

"We accept that we have not reached the endpoint and have work further to go."

David Bowermaster: 206-464-2724 or dbowermaster@seattletimes.com