THE CYPRUS Airways (CY) joint venture with Swissport – GAP Vassilopoulos (Cyprus) Ltd has been chosen as one of the two companies that will take over ground handling at the island’s airports.
The second joint venture was named yesterday as Goldair Handling S.A., Servisair UK Ltd and CLIN Company Ltd, the latter of which is a subsidiary of Louis.
Airport operator Hermes announced the two winning ventures yesterday after examining four tenders for the job, saying the contract period would be for seven years.
The effective date for commencement of Ground Handling Services is expected to be May 15 this year. Hermes, which has been operating ground handling itself – other than for CY flights – was obliged to open the sector to competition so that airlines could have a competitive choice.
But the CY-Swissport venture brought the national carrier to the brink of strike action just before Christmas when unions failed to reach an agreement with the airline on the transfer of CY ground handling staff to the joint venture.
Some 140 employees will be affected by the move and union members fear losing their status and benefits as CY staff.
There was no immediate response yesterday from the affected unions to the news that the joint venture had been given one of the two contracts.
Last week, they entered new talks with the company to resolve the outstanding issues.
CY spokesman Kyriacos Kyriacou said yesterday evening the company had heard nothing from the unions, but he said they knew there was a strong likelihood that the venture would secure the job. It would not be a surprise to them and should not affect the talks on outstanding issues. “The company has been working a long time towards this,” Kyriacou said.
The national carrier insists no staff benefits will be lost in the move over to the joint venture, which it says will enable the airline to carry out the services more cost effectively and could save the company nearly £2 million a year.
CY will hold over 25 per cent of shares in the venture, giving it a strong input in decision-making. At the moment, CY only performs about 20-25 per cent of the total work they hope to be doing with Swissport.
“This is a positive step for the company and will help it towards securing a better future,” said Kyriacou.
The ailing carrier announced last week that financial results for 2007 would be best they’d been in recent years, when the airline was operating at a loss. The results will be announced early next week.
CY has been operating under a tight EU-approved restructuring plan for the past two years that involved redundancies and cost cutting.
