Does each airline has their own ground handlers at each airport the airline is flying?

Question

I mean, let's take the American flight from Dallas to Frankfurt with a B777. Is in Frankfurt the ground handler an AA-guy, or maybe a Lufthansa-guy, who is making all the ground work?

Answer 1

Hard to say. Some airlines use their people at their hub airports and contract out for other airports and some use their people and others contract out all their services.

Answer 2

It really can be both.

At airports where the airline has a lot of flights, it will most likely be an employee of that company.  At stations that only see a few flights a day, a lot of times the airline will contract someone to perform the jobs.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Answer 3

As an accomapanying mechanic it depends on the airline like when i was flying the A340 to Sydney, Brisbane & Melbourne I do the groundhandling with the conditions that if ever I need to have spares and since Quantas flies to us courtesy they can lend us parts and after a while we teach them to handle A340 and then groundhandling was given to them. In Vancouver,  Air Canada has A340 but since we have no bilateral agreement they never fly to us, but they offered their services in the end when the company sees it is more economical for the local to do the ground handling, it was given to them. It is the airline's choice but often host country also fly to the visitor so they either get it or another local with the same aircraft, type rated people will be given the contract. Also consideration is the number of flights if you have as much as two flights/day then mostly you have your own team to handle and office to keep spares in case of breakdown.

Answer 4

The ground handler may work for the airline that leases the gate and that same gate might be shared by three different airlines or more.  New landing slots are a rare and expensive and are a huge part of an airlines expenditures. Sharing them is cost effective.   Every time an airliner lands it has to pay a fee to the airport.  The friendly skies are not free.  Part of that cost are directly reflected by the cost of your ticket.