Free flights, rhinos in the hold and riding on the carousel – the truth about baggage handlers

Oliver Smith, Deputy Head of Travel 24 August 2017 • 9:17am

“People think we do nothing except load bags – but there’s much more to the job than that”

James Collins, Head of Airside Operations at Red Handling, Norwegian’s in-house ground handling agency, talks to Telegraph Travel about the world of baggage handling.

You get free flights

“I left college without any tangible qualifications and for a largely unskilled job it’s fairly well paid,” says James. “You start as a ramp agent (baggage handler) on around £22,000, plus overtime, but there’s plenty of opportunities for promotions. A senior ramp agent gets £24,000, dispatchers get £25,000. I started as a baggage handler, then went to senior baggage handler, dispatcher, allocator, supervisor, duty manager, and am now head of airside operations. You can also move into training, or safety and compliance. There are lots of steps up, with increases in salary each time.”

Norwegian’s baggage handlers, unlike most, also enjoy the same perks as the airline’s cabin crew.

James explains: “Traditionally, you’d have ground handling companies, such as Menzies, who service numerous airlines, but Red Handling is Norwegian’s in-house agency. We feel like we’re part of the business and were recently given the same flight concessions as the cabin crew. We can partake in their standby travel scheme [airline staff typically pay only tax on flights within their carrier’s route network, subject to availability], which is fantastic. It’s a multicultural team, and lots of my colleagues use those flights to visit family abroad.”

There’s more to the job than meets the eye

“People think we do nothing except load bags – but there’s much more to the job than that,” explains James. “You get to push back and tow aircraft, for starters. The coolest part of the job for me is towing an aircraft at night. There’s complete silence, it’s pitch black, and you’re towing an aircraft, following green lights and talking to air traffic control. Not many people get to do that, and it really appeals to an aviation enthusiast like me. You also get to operate a wide range of machinery and equipment, and we de-ice our own aircraft too.”

"The coolest part of the job for me is towing an aircraft at night"

It’s perfect for those who hate the 9 to 5

Baggage handling is perfect for aviation enthusiasts – and golfers. “Shift times vary,” says James. “You may be in as early as 5am or as late as 11pm. And we have a skeleton staff at night, so we’re expected to be available to work 24/7, right up to Christmas Day. But for me, this is a big plus – I struggle to adapt to the 9-to-5 routine. There are plenty of early starts but that means you often get to finish at two in the afternoon. In the summer, that’s fantastic. You can play a round of golf or go to watch the football.”

Baggage handling can get competitive

Quick turnarounds are important, says James, with a 30-minute target commonplace. And to help keep workers motivated, a competitive element has been introduced. “We have three different teams at Norwegian: Fjord, Viking and Aurora – and we keep internal stats that show which team is the doing the job best,” he adds.

There’s surprisingly little heavy lifting – thanks to the “magic carpet”

Shifting heavy cases all day must be backbreaking work, right? Not exactly.

James explains: “For narrow-bodies aircraft, like the Boeing 737, we have what we call a ‘magic carpet’. You load bags onto it, press a button, and that loads it onto the aircraft. For wide-bodied aircraft, like the 787, cases are loaded into baggage cans, or bins. A machine, called a high loader, then drives these onto the plane. All in all, there’s actually a very limited amount of manual work.”

There might be a rhino under your feet

“Cargo often includes animals. I’ve loaded valuable racehorses, live fish, even rhinos heading to zoos.” says James. “Most air passengers don’t realise there could be a wild animal right under their feet.”

One of these could be sharing the hold with your luggage Credit: ©JohanSwanepoel - stock.adobe.com/By Johan Swanepoel

The pilot knows when your pet is on board

Not all the animals in the cargo hold are wild. People’s dogs and cats are often down there too.

“We really take care of them, of course, and make sure they are fed and watered and kept in the shade,” says James. “Whenever live animals travel on an aircraft, the captain is informed, so they are sure to keep air circulated and the temperature at a certain level. The same applies if there is perishable goods on board such as fresh food.”

Baggage handlers meet sniffer dogs, too

“Sniffer dogs are used quite a lot actually, mainly when offloading baggage,” says James. “Customs target certain routes, but we won’t know in advance if they are coming – they will simply turn up without warning.”

Baggage handlers get to meet rhinos, pets and sniffer dogs Credit: ©Africa Studio - stock.adobe.com

A broken suitcase might not be so bad

Should your bag be damaged during a flight, it might not be such a bad thing. You’ll be given a brand new replacement, according to James, which might well be worth more than the original.

He adds: “It’s rare, but if a bag is found to be obviously broken we will send it to lost and found, rather than to the baggage carousel. We’ll also offer passengers a replacement bag. I’m unsure on the exact cost of the replacements, but from my experience they usually look far more valuable than what the passenger had before.”

A broken case could earn you a more valuable replacement Credit: JURGEN REISCH

Don’t want your luggage to be lost? Arrive on time – and beware transfers

Most cases of lost luggage involve transfers. If the connection is tight, explains James, there’s a chance your bags won’t make it onto the second flight in time.

Passengers who check luggage in at the last minute also run the risk of being parted from their bags.

“The sooner you check in the better,” he says. “It means we’ve got additional time to process the bags and there’s less chance they’ll be left behind. If passenger check in at the last minute - the bags still have to go through screening and be driven across to the planes, so there is more chance it will be left behind. It’s unlikely, but possible.”

Retrieving a single bag from a loaded hold isn’t that difficult

If a passenger checks in luggage, but then decides not to travel - or simply fails to turn up at the gate - airlines need to find and remove their case. This is easier than it sounds.

“For wide-bodied aircraft, each bag is loaded into a container that carries about 40 bags,” says James. “The bags are scanned and the container has a log which shows which bags are inside. So there’s only 40 bags to search through - not 300.”