How many ground vehicles at an airport?

[Mattie941 4]

Hi,

Does anyone know how many ground vehicles a commercial airport has? I mean quantity of vehicles, i.e. How many: pushbacks, buses, stairs, tugs, food trucks? It came up in conversation the other day and I am completely clueless.

Thanks,
Matt

Edited December 22, 2020 by Mattie941

[HighBypass 2,339]

.. loads of vehicles.. loads of them  Of course the amount may change to IMMENSELY OBSCENE depending upon the particular commercial airport being discussed.. London City airport is commercial, but it is nothing compared to Heathrow, or O'Hare etc..

Interesting question indeed, but I fear that it is along the lines of "How long is a piece of string?" 🍻

Chock may give you a better idea - he used to work at EGCC ground support, baggage etc.

[SAS443 1,723]

I work at ESSA / Arlanda. and just for the winterseason alone we have roughly 45 vehicles to deal with snow removal on airside, 17 of them are PSB's (Plow/Sweeeper/Blower, the ones you see on the runway driving in formation)

No clue how many tugs, catering and other vehicles we have on airside. 😎

 

[Chock 17,769]

Do you mean how many in total, or how many that actually work? 🤣

Seriously though, it is a lot. I'll try to give you an educated guess based on the two service agents I worked for (Menzies and Aviator) and what they had, plus observations of other companies. 

So, Menzies and at Aviator at EGCC, both companies one Mulag, which was capable of pushing out small regional prop planes and was sometimes used for that. Unlike all the other trucks which could tow baggage carts and LDs etc, the Mulag is diesel, so it was always popular because it had a good heater in it, but being a diesel, it could not be driven into the baggage hall, so it was mostly used to tow cargo trailers, and on the subject of towing trailers, the rules are that you can tow up to four empty ones, and three loaded ones although occasionally this rule gets 'bent'. This is a Mulag:

Then you have EBT (Electric Baggage Tractors). These are the true workhorses at an airport and there are loads of them at all airports. They are quite powerful (15,000 Newtons tractive effort). They are typically charged overnight and from that charge they can run for a lot of hours. Flat out they'll do about 20 mph. I would say most service agent companies have between 20 and 30 of these things. What you cannot see when you are at an airport waiting at the gate, is underneath the pier where you are. This is where the vast majority of vehicles get parked and it is where most of the charging bays are for the EBTs, but it is also where many other vehicles get parked too, so it can be a bit misleading when you look at an airport and don't see many vehicles, because quite often they are hidden from sight. This is an EBT:

The big tugs you see at the airport vary in size and power rating. some of them can push anything out, others are limited to what they are capable of handling. Both Menzies and Aviator had approximately ten tugs each. The numbers varied as things broke, got fixed, were swapped about etc, but on a typical day I'd say ten was a good average. Typically they had one or two of these, which can push anything up to probably a 757:

And then roughly six or eight these things (not necessarily this make, but they did have some of these exact ones) which can push the bigger and the smaller stuff:

The difficulty with the first type, is that they are quite high up on the cab view, and that can make it hard to see under the aeroplane you are pushing out, so that is why you will quite often see people using the big tugs if they can find one, rather than the little ones. These are diesel. That's one of the things which surprises people about pushbacks, it is actually a bit easier to push a big plane out than a small one because you can see underneath a big one and they react slower in turns, so you have more chance to see if things are going awry when pushing a big plane, whereas you can't see under and ATR or a CRJ, so the headset guy will often help with steering guidance as they walk alongside the tug.

As an interesting bit of trivia, the APC in the movie Aliens, which is lowered out of the dropship, is actually a converted airport tug. There's a bit of movie trickery going on with that thing too. The real thing would not actually be tall enough to fit people in it, even if there was the room inside it to do so, so the interior shots of the APC don't really match up with the exterior shots, but who cares eh? It's still a top movie. Inside the real tugs, they have concrete blocks to add to their weight so they can gain enough traction to move an aeroplane.

Then you've got high loaders (aka hi-los). There are two main types in use, the big Commanders, and the slightly smaller ones, which we nicknamed 'skateboards'. Both companies (theoretically) had up to ten of these, but in reality the numbers were smaller because they would quite often break down since mechanically, they have a lot of complex systems, so on a daily basis, there might be five of them in use. These things are for loading and unloading ULDs (unit load devices), more commonly known as 'cans'. They have a platform which can be raised and lowered and the platform has a powered roller system which can be used to rotate the cans as well as move them in and out of the cargo hold. Most aeroplanes will also have a power system and rollers so that the cans are able to be moved about inside the plane too.

This is one of the big ones:

This is a smaller 'skateboard':

These things are tedious to drive around because they are really slow, so it takes ages to drive one to a remote part of the airport, and in poor weather, you are really exposed to the weather being that high up stood up on the platform whilst driving! they also require quite precise driving because you have to line them up pretty much perfectly with the cargo door opening, and there is only about two inches of clearance on either side. It gets really tight when lining one of these up with the front cargo hold of a smaller Airbus variant because you get really close to the starboard engine nacelle (and I mean only a few inches). These are diesel.

All of that careful driving which is required is why you have a lot of training before they let you loose on all this gear. You have to pass a lot of tests (100 percent pass mark required) in order to get the airside driving licence for this kind of stuff.

Then you've got belt loaders which are also diesel powered. These are the vehicles which are used to load most baggage. Typically you will put one on the front and one on the rear cargo hold simultaneously, and work the front and the back at the same time, although you have to be careful not to have the rear filled and the front empty, since there is a risk that the aeroplane would tip onto its tail, so sometimes you only work one end of the thing at a time. since you typically need two of these per plane, and there are a lot of planes, there are quite a lot of these things. Both Menzies and Aviator had about fifteen of these things for use on a daily basis, so they rarely sat parked for very long and sometimes it was difficult to find one for your flight and there'd be a bit of a mad rush. Being diesel, they are quite fast, you can get them up to possibly thirty five miles per hour (not that you should since the speed limit is 20 in most places and drops to five or ten in some locations).

But they are often horrible to drive because most of them have an exposed bucket seat which seems to be tailor made to collect water, some have a seat which can tip up to drain this, but most don't, so quite often you end up with a wet @rse from sitting in them to drive. One of the tricky things about driving them is that the belt is offset to one side and projects a long way in front of the driving position, so it's a bit like driving around with a jousting lance in front of you, as a result you have to be careful going around bends if there is something coming the other way, or you might endanger the other driver.

You need one which has safety side rails which can retract all the way back to work on things like the CRJ and the EMB 145, because the rails would foul the engine nacelles if they could not be moved out of the way, so there were a couple of these types specifically for use one those aeroplanes and the rest were not able to be used on that type of aeroplane. This is a typical one pictured below - the grey metal part of the rails is the bit which can extend. When elevating that up to something like an A330, that belt goes to a pretty steep angle, cos the rear bulk hold on an A330 is perhaps thirty feet off the ground, which is why they have safety rails:

De-icing/anti icing trucks. Not every service agent has its own capability for this, but most do. so they have a couple of these things. Never drove one of these myself as a job and only ever had a few goes in them, because it is a separate job from typical rampie work, and you are on call 24 hours too as a de-icer, so I didn't fancy it as a permanent job. You need a good head for heights in that spray bucket too, trust me, it looks a lot higher up when you are in the thing and it's up on the tail of a 757. They have two spray systems, one fires out anti-icing fluid which coats the plane to prevent ice from forming for about 30 minutes or so, which is a yellowish/green colour, and the other sprays hot water with some detergent in it for melting ice off:

Then you have steps. some of these are drivable, some are towed. Each service agent probably has at least fifteen of these things. There are two sizes, normal and widebody. Not all planes use them, for example Ryanair do not use the jet bridges or steps (this is to save money, since the airport charges for this), instead they use the built-in airstairs on their 737 NGs. ATRs, Dash 8s, EMB-145s, CRJs and Dornier 328s also use their airstairs. Note that you usually need two sets of steps to service and aeroplane (unless you are also using the air bridge). The front stairs/air bridge is for the passengers, the rear one is for the cleaners and is kept on when the aeroplane is being refuelled so that if there is a problem, it can be used for evacuation.

On the subject of fuelling, there are of course lots of fuel trucks. These are operated by the airport itself, not the service agent companies. Most of them are not tankers, but pumps, i.e. they do not actually carry fuel, instead they connect to an underground storage tank which is fed from a large fuel dump site off the main airport, and use their engine to pump fuel into the aeroplane. Manchester airport has a couple of tankers, but these are rarely seen and it is mostly the pump trucks which are used. They have about fifty of these things. These pump trucks usually park up at the side of stand 65 at EGCC when not in use.

Then there are GPUs (ground power units). Most airliners plug into the FEP (fixed electrical power) on the stands which are on an extending trolley, but if on a remote stand with no power, or the FEP is broken, or they want to save money (it's about 50 quid per hour to use the FEP), they will use a GPU. Ryanair does this. So most service agents have five or six of these things.

They look like this below. On the panel you can see under a perspex door which you can prop open to keep the rain out, there are a bunch of switches. The ones on the left are for starting it and the red and green buttons on the right are for selecting different voltages for different aeroplane systems. The channel on the side of it near the yellow box is where the power leads are stowed. The yellow box is a receptacle where you stow the connector plugs; this has a magnetic cut off switch in it as a safety measure, so you cannot lower the tow bar until these are stowed and the switch has been triggered. This is to stop you driving off towing this thing whilst it is still connected to the aeroplane:

Some aeroplanes need compressed air to crank the engines for a start up if the APU is busted. For this you need an air start unit. Most service agents have a couple of these things. These things are really loud and they weight a lot, which you really notice when you tow them:

Not powered, but still 'vehicles', there are lots of different types of trailers which each service company has. The really common ones are the baggage trailers. These can hold about 40-50 big suitcases if you stack them properly. You can tow four of these when empty, and three when they are loaded and you typically would use an EBT to do that. Each company has probably at least a two hundred of these things:

Similarly-sized to the baggage trailers, there are some more specialised versions of these, such as lockable hazardous goods trailers (for radioactives, weaponry etc). Most companies have a couple of those and you will see them about occasionally, they are usually yellow and have all kinds of warning stickers on them. Then there are specialist cages for transporting animals, and again there are usually a couple of these.

If like me, you love animals, you will be pleased to know that everyone I've ever worked with at the airport is always really kind to animals in transit, saying hello to them and making sure they have water, covering the cage if it is raining and the thing is waiting to be loaded, sometimes even bringing the cages into the office to keep the animals company if they are waiting a long time to be loaded.

Slightly more grim from a cargo point of view, there are special HUM trailers (human remains), these can fit a coffin in them and again there are usually a couple of these per company. You might be surprised to know that ramp agents are legally entitled to refuse to handle human remains if they are squeamish about that sort of thing. I've never known anyone exercise that right, but you apparently can do this if you like. This is also true for animals being used in testing (which is rare these days, but does go on), you can refuse to handle them if you are bothered by it.

Then you have LD8 trailers. These can typically carry two cargo cans, although there are different sized cans for different aeroplanes, with type names such as AKH and AKE (these are the two really common types and that designation indicates their sizes). So when you see these things, they all have an individual identifier number so they can be recognised for a load plan to know where you are placing them on the aeroplane in order to balance it properly, so you might for example see a can with AKE234990 on the side of it, and when you look on your aeroplane's load plan, it might say that particular can has to go right at the front or whatever.

You can tell by looking at this can below that it is for a narrow bodied airliner (A320) because it has an angled part on both ends. This is so that this fits the curved cross section of the A320. The actual platform of this trailer in the picture can be rotated through ninety degrees so the locks holding the can in place can be released and the can will then be able to be pushed off it onto the loader's platform.

If you see an AKE can, it only has one end angled, so you can fit two of these alongside one another across the width of a wide-bodied aeroplane. All of the little catches and handles on the trailer pictured below are for raising and lowering lugs with pop up to secure the can on the trailer when it is being driven around. If you look on the edge of the trailer where it is rusty, you can see it is dented. This is where it has bashed up against the reinforced edge of the high-loader's platform as it has been driven up to it so the can could be pushed off it onto the high-loader's platform. This slightly battered state is what most equipment is like at an airport. Very few bits of equipment are all shiny and new, and if they are, they probably won't stay that way for long.

Again, you can tow three when loaded and four when empty. There are smaller ones which can carry one can, and these types have a platform which can be unlocked and rotated so you can load the cans in the right way; the cans face different directions depending one where you load them in the plane (see pic above).

As with the baggage trailers, each company has hundreds of these things. It's not uncommon for each company to 'borrow' ones from other companies so long as you don't do it too blatantly. These things take up a lot of room and so they are often parked up on the less commonly used remote stands. Each service company has its own designated stands where they have allocated bays for leaving equipment, but they often are not big enough for everything, so sometimes you have a bit of a job getting to your equipment and occasionally have to move other stuff out of the way to do this. The trailer below is very new, most of them are not this shiny and have all kinds of dents and scrapes on them: 

Then you have cargo pallet trollies, sometimes called 'wellworks' or 'dollies'. Like the LD8 trailers for cans, each company has loads of these things too. They are very heavy duty (by hand, you can just about pull two of these if they are connected, but it is incredibly hard work to even try to pull one nd if one has a loaded cargo pallet on it, you would probably not even be able to move it by hand). These are for carrying the large alloy cargo pallets which big widebody airliners such as the A330, 787 Dreamliner and Triple Seven carry. These are much wider than the EBTs, so you have to be good at judging that to line them up with the high loader platform as well as being aware that they stick out a lot when you are passing other vehicles, again this one is new and very shiny:

An exception to these typical numbers of equipment at each company, is Jet 2. They have an incredibly large number of tugs and loaders (way more than any other company) and all their equipment is less than three years old, whereas for most other companies, they lease stuff off a company called TCR and some of the equipment is really very battered, so if you ever want a job at an airport driving this stuff and you want to drive shiny new equipment, then Jet is the place to go.

Another service agent company - Swissport - tends to have a bit more equipment than most of the other service agents and at EGCC they are the only main service agent which uses the 'cradle' tugs which pick the nose wheel up like you see in MSFS, all the other companies tend to use a traditional tug and a tow bar.

On the subject of equipment, there are lots of tow bars as well. Most companies have perhaps three or four bars for each type of aircraft they service. It's not unknown for companies to borrow these off other companies if they are running short of gear.

That's about it for service agents, but there are of course many other companies on the airport. Sky Chef have numerous trucks which can elevate their rear cargo area up to load stuff into the plane. Likewise there several 'ambilifts' which can carry disabled, elderly or infirm people then raise their cabins to allow these people to board or disembark without using the steps.

Then there are all kinds of repair trucks, parcel vans, engineer vehicles, the airport's Air Operations personnel (these are the guys who marshal the planes on stand if the safedock is busted or unavailable and who also function as the police to pull you over if you are speeding or some such). They are also the 'follow me' cars. Then there's fire engines, ambulances, cleaning trucks, gritters, snowploughs, bird scarer vehicles and so on.

Also bear in mind that all these vehicles are on a rolling maintenance schedule, so at EGCC there is a big repair place for vehicles where you drop stuff off and then collect it a couple of days later. This place is referred to as 'MT' (motor transport). It is located over near where the Jet 2 hangar behind the big Thomas Cook hangar is on the Fairey Apron. This means that whilst most service agents might have say five high loaders operational, they will probably have one or two other over at MT being serviced.

I've never counted them, but all told, I would not be surprised to learn there were perhaps 800 operational powered vehicles with airside vehicle permits at a place like Manchester Airport, plus thousands of trailers. 

Edited December 25, 2020 by Chock

[HighBypass 2,339]

See - told you Chock would have a rather good idea about these things. THANK YOU to Chock for that epic "War & Peace" sized post, in a good way! Dedication, sir! 

23 hours ago, Chock said:

As an interesting bit of trivia, the APC in the movie Aliens, which is lowered out of the dropship, is actually a converted airport tug.

You beat me to it. The first time I watched Aliens, noting the APC chassis, wheels and cab placement I said  "That's an airport tug" 🍻