Recently, we spoke to Alexey Gromov. He is a Baggage Handling System Manager for Northern Gateway LLC at Pulkovo Airport. He discusses his career in aviation, the interview process he had to go through, his role, and advice for aspiring aviation professionals.
How did you get into aviation?
At my interview at the airport, airport’s COO Mr. Volker Wendefeuer said, “You have managed to work on all possible kinds of transport: ships, trains, cars, so aviation will be your last place of work,” but after thinking about a little, he added,”No, the last place should be a spaceport!”
I never dreamed of working in aviation, because I was born in a hereditary sailor’s family and since childhood dreamed of a maritime career. Therefore, after school, I entered the Maritime Academy at the Electric and Automation Faculty (my father and grandfather were marine engineers).Life turned out so that I graduated from the Academy in 1996, when the USSR had already collapsed, and with it many Soviet shipping companies went bankrupt. Therefore, without maritime experience, I could not find a job in my profession.
My first place of work was a city bus park, where I supervised the work of mechanical technicians. Later I went to work in the St.-Petersburg Underground railway as an Electrical Engineer. At some point I was lucky enough to get a job as an Electric Engineer Officer in a large tanker shipping company. Only then I started to work in the specialty that I had dreamed of since childhood.
After working for several years at sea, I became disillusioned with the work of the Electric Engineer Officer, because I realized that it was not possible to build any career in this position. Therefore, after 3 years at sea, I entered the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg State University to study in absentia. I was hoping to find a job ashore at some logistics company connected with the maritime business after graduation.
When I was in my last year of study, 3 years later, I decided to take a break from maritime work and try to find an internship in maritime law. I even got a job as an underwriter of marine insurance, but unexpectedly for me, Daifuku (world leader in the field of logistics systems) paid attention to my CV. At that time, they were installing conveyor equipment at a new Toyota automotive plant in St.-Petersburg. Daifuku was interested in my qualification as an engineer with knowledge of the English language and work experience abroad. They made me a generous offer and I decided to take this chance.
During my 5 years of work at Daifuku, I have gained valuable experience in the field of material handling, learned how to negotiate with customers and contractors, organize the production of individual conveyor elements at local factories, and conduct conveyor equipment installation projects. In 2012, due to the lack of new projects in Russia for Daifuku, I was cut and started looking for a job again.At that time, the construction of the new main terminal of Pulkovo Airport was underway in St.-Petersburg. The operator was Northern Capital Gateway LLC (NCG).
NCG was implementing the first project in the aviation industry of my country based on a public-private partnership without attracting budgetary funds and one of its shareholders was Fraport AG - one of the leading players in the global airport business. Fraport's management was responsible for the operational activities at the airport. In 2012, internal construction work with the installation of engineering systems was to begin.
At this time, the NCG operation team under Fraport's supervision began to create a new department for the maintenance and operation of state of art Baggage Handling System (BHS) and Hold Baggage Screening (HBS) systems, which never existed in the airport before. Since there was no way to find people with similar experience in St.-Petersburg, NCG started looking for people familiar with conveyor equipment, preferably with English language and experience in international companies. I was invited to an interview.
What was the interview process that you had to go through?
At the interview, I liked the Fraport's approach (I was interviewed by the Fraport's managers) to the candidates’ qualifications. They were not looking for people with aviation experience, but tried to assess the candidate’s motivations and their personal qualities based on previous work experience. So, my candidacy was liked by the presence of maritime experience.
My future boss said that seamen are used to working in extreme conditions without the possibility of receiving outside help. This forces them to make non-standard decisions and rely only on themselves and the vessel's grew, and this is what is needed to work with the BHS, since it's a key infrastructure object of the airport terminal and requires almost instant response to malfunctions and non-standard situations. As a result, I became the first employee of the new BHS department.
At the construction stage, I faced the following tasks:
- the employees' recruitment to a new department (engineers and operators);
- new equipment installation supervision;
- preparation of the Standard Operation Procedures (SOP), maintenance instructions, job descriptions, safety instructions etc.;
- new employees training;
- BHS solutions coordination with authorities;
- Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) preparation in the BHS and HBS parts.
I became more and more immersed in the world of the airport. Due to the presence of different systems at the airport, its autonomy, the active use of international norms, standards of various airlines, the work of authorities (police, customs, immigration), it reminded me of the maritime business, only at high speeds. Therefore, this work captured and inspired me.
I saw a lot of people nearby who came to the airport from non-aviation areas like me and I used this when I created my own department team. The airport is a separate world capable of supporting itself. Therefore, anyone can find an interesting case here. I was hiring people with economic or legal education, former seamen, cooks, operators from automotive factories, even one former doctor to work in the new department. All of them got a chance to build their careers at the airport.
A year passed and at the end of 2013, the department created from zero level successfully coped with all the tasks, passed the ORAT and helped the airport to transfer all operational activities to the new terminal building.
What do you do in your current role as a Baggage Handling System Manager?
BHS is a key asset of the airport terminal. In my case, these’re: about 5 km of conveyor belts, 88 passenger check-in counters and 6 baggage reclaim carousels. Since Pulkovo Airport operates 24/7, the maintenance and operation of such a big amount of equipment is not an easy task. My employees and I must not only carry out the necessary amount of maintenance directly on the conveyors, but also monitor the balanced loading of the system, know and correctly use redundancy scenarios, understand the logic of low-level control (Program Logical Controllers - PLC) as well as high-level control (Sortation computers, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition - SCADA), monitor the HBS operations, understand how BHS interacts with other airport's information systems like: Airport Operational DataBase (AODB), Departure Control System (DCS) etc.
This means that anyone, including me, who works with BHS should understand the electrics, mechanics, electronics, IT and operational activities of the airport. It is almost impossible to find such people in the labor market, so my department mainly employs those who started their career here with simple positions as a technician or operator and only then became an engineer or shift leader.
As a BHS manager, I daily monitor:
- the labor safety;
- working hours of staff and their mood;
- monitor the completeness of maintenance;
- monitor the implementation of BHS SLA;
- organize the investigation of malfunctions and the adoption of countermeasures to prevent them in the future;
- organize the necessary purchases;
- monitor budget execution and much more.
This activity helps me to plan the further development of the BHS in my airport and taking into account current trends in this area. During my work, I have managed to implement several modernization projects, for example: installation of the Self Bag Drop (SBD) equipment, implementation of the additional BHS redundancy scenarios, adding of the luggage sorting options, and currently I am working on replacing the entire high-level control system (IT migration project).
Being a recognized expert in the field of airport and baggage systems, I have made several presentations at international summits dedicated to baggage systems and the ORAT organization.Therefore, I’m sure that my work will never be boring and I will always find an opportunity to occupy myself with interesting tasks.
What advice would you give to aspiring aviation professionals?
In conclusion, I want to give some advice to aviation professionals present and future:
- Never stop at what has been achieved and strive for perfection, look for interesting challenges so that your work brings you pleasure.
- Never be afraid to come to aviation and develop yourself in its various fields, even if you do not have a special education.
I came to aviation from the automotive industry with a maritime background but I can say that only here I found an opportunity to reveal my talents and build a successful career.
Even if I leave my current job to work at the spaceport, I will always remember with gratitude those years that I worked at the airport.
