EASA Proposes First EU-wide Regulation on Ground Handling

The first-ever proposal to regulate ground handling across European Union airports, was recently published by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

Ground handling encompasses any activity that occurs on the ground to prepare an aircraft and its passengers for departure or arrival.

EASA’s proposal aims to increase the safety, cybersecurity and consistency of all the actions that happen on the ground before and after a flight, delivering benefits to passengers and their airlines.

According to EASA, until now, this major area of aviation has been largely self-regulated. In most cases, operational arrangements, including those impacting safety, are captured only in bilateral service agreements between ground handling service providers and the aircraft operators to whom they provide services.

“This entirely new proposal fills an important gap in the overall regulation of aviation operations in the European Union, which means that we will now have an end-to-end approach to ensuring aviation safety and cybersecurity,” said EASA Acting Executive Director Luc Tytgat.

Ground handling includes aircraft loading and unloading with cargo, mail and baggage; passenger boarding and disembarkation; de-icing and anti-icing; refuelling; and securing the aircraft on the ground during turnaround, pushback and towing.

“For passengers and their airlines this will provide increased certainty that ground handling operations are being carried out safely and consistently in all major airports across the EASA Member States,” Tytgat added.

EASA is proposing for an efficient approach on the oversight of ground handling organisations by competent authorities. According to the agency, this is expected to avoid multiple verifications of the same activities and organisational aspects and gradually reduce the significant number of audits performed mostly by aircraft operators.

“This way, organisations should be able to better allocate their resources from auditing to managing the safety of their operations. As now, aircraft operators will retain overall responsibility for aircraft safety and flight safety.”

EASA’s proposed regulation is expected to affect approximately 300,000 workers in the ground handling industry, one of the largest groups of aviation employees.

The ground handling regulation is expected to be published in late 2024 or early 2025. EASA is proposing a transition period of three years for implementation after the regulation’s publication.