International expansion of ground handling service providers at the airports

Abstract

The goal of this paper was to measure and assess the international expansion of independent ground handling providers. Based on the results of individual measurements, we can state that each of the five most important independent providers of groundhandling services selected by us has already undergone a significant international expansion, and thus currently prefers the service of foreign airports to domestic ones. Globalization and the liberalization of the entire aviation sector have largely contributed to this fact, mainly due to the unlocking of market entry and the creation of more favorable conditions on foreign markets. Among the secondary objectives we have included an analysis of the state of the ground handling sector together with an analysis of the European liberalization Directive 96/67 / EC and its impact on the European groundhandling market. The main findings were that for example prices for the provision of ground handling services fell more sharply, while the quality of services increased and the number of providers at airports generally increased, which helped to increase the market share of third-party ground handling providers. The motive for the elaboration of the paper was the outdatedness of previous studies aimed at assessing the international expansion of ground handling service providers. Another motive was the elaboration of a proposal for a measurement method with regard to the performance of providers in foreign markets. The paper presents individual calculations with current input data and classification of providers in terms of the shape of global expansion, taking into account the current ongoing global pandemic Covid-19