The Operation Management of ground handling services in Business Aviation

The year of 2020 was undoubtedly one of the most devastating years in the entire course of the aviation history because of a substantial drop in demand for passenger air transport that threatened the viability of many firms in the air transport industry. The bachelor’s thesis aims to determine the influence of COVID-19 in operations management of the aircraft ground handling operations in Business Aviation. The entire process is analysed “before” and “after” COVID-19 pandemic with the application of operations management tools like SIPOC, Flowchart and Value Stream Mapping. The changes identified throughout the process are interpreted using the Five Performance Objectives framework. In the practical part, the analyses are conducted on the operations of aircraft ground handling agent in one Ukrainian company that offers such services. The results revealed that COVID‐19 has not affected the quality of the process, which in fact remained unchanged. However, COVID-19 has gradually affected the process’s speed, flexibility and especially dependability due to unexpected COVID-19 intervention, resulting in increased communication burden between state entities and the company. Based on the aforementioned findings, several suggestions are provided that could possibly improve the process during the unexpected crisis like COVID-19.