Playing to wing

As part of our ongoing series of blogs from throughout the business, we’ll continue to bring you stories from colleagues who are doing their bit right across the operation on how things have changed during the current crisis.

Today, we hear from East Midlands Airport (EMA) operations manager, Martin Green.

‘The past five weeks have been tough at the air hub,’ said Martin. ‘However, we have managed to maintain customer expectations as well as the safety of our people.

‘Cleaning has been enhanced and, like everywhere else, we have implemented the correct social distancing measures and provided the team with masks, gloves and hand sanitiser.

‘We have also introduced further spacing for our air cargo unit load device (ULD) containers and reduced the teams to three per can, rather than the five we usually operate with every night.

‘The office has introduced an “Orange Team” identifiable through orange tabards, rather than the normal green ones, as additional covid-19 staff resource. These extra few staff are covering the roles we’ve temporarily lost due to colleagues off sick or self-isolating. These teams can also be identified for costs purposes at a later date as the agency book them as covid-19 duties.

‘The current situation with the virus has obviously resulted in a lot more hard work at the air hub, but it’s something we’re dealing with well. I would say that overall, the morale at EMA is pretty good and the team have been great at just getting on with the job at hand. The number of colleagues we have currently self-isolating remains quite high, but this is to be expected. Safety is and must remain, paramount.

‘With regards to the self-testing stations set up by the Government, my family and I have all been tested. It was all very surreal and like something out of a movie with everyone masked up and no-one allowed to open their car windows or have their stereos on.

‘The people doing the testing were really helpful. The Army were there, and it was the military doctors taking all the swabs, one via the mouth, which was really uncomfortable, and another via the nose, which was fine. There was a bit of waiting time as all the cars were corralled in different lanes, similar to when you queue at a road toll booth, but after we were tested, we had our negative tests come through some 72 hours later. All good.’