The Operations Department is responsible for the preparation, final assembly, inspection, dispatch, transportation and delivery of accurate and safe flight uplifts to a customer base of 105 airlines at Dubai International Airport, 24 hours-a-day, every day of the year.

The department consists of five separate but complementary functions each with dedicated, highly experienced teams of managers, supervisors and staff

1 - Ware wash & Equipment Management

2 - Flight Preparation

3 - Airside Logistics

4 - Transport

5 - Administration & Communications

Each function closely coordinates its activities to mutually support one another with Hygiene, Safety, HACCP and Quality processes running across the functions to ensure that the best possible service and food product are always delivered regardless of disruptions such as sand storms and aircraft technical problems. Resource levels are carefully planned to ensure that the busiest times of the day can be effectively and efficiently handled and training is coordinated to ensure that all team members are aware of, and comply with, the latest procedures and criteria, providing an environment that is safe, hygienic and complies with international standards.

Ware wash & Equipment Management is responsible for ensuring that all key user departments have ample supplies of clean and serviceable equipment at all times. Used items received from inbound flights are washed and sanitized using a range modern of the most modern flight wash machines. The 5 automated washers, 2 glass washers, 2 bulk washers and a cart wash have the capacity to handle 150 meal carts and 65,000 individual pieces of equipment each hour – in excess of 1.5 million pieces per day !!!. The effectiveness of the process is assured using micro-biological testing. After processing, the items are distributed to Production, Bonded Stores and Flight Preparation in accordance with strict delivery schedules.

Flight Preparation brings an average of 40,000 pieces of equipment and food together to form each complete flight. This involves numerous activities handled by different teams:

• Holloware & Equipment preparation use the airline packing documents to load the equipment into the specified locations and containers. Each item is checked, and polished if necessary, to ensure the highest standard of cleanliness. The team ensures that every flight has exactly the right amount of spoons, plates, napkins...
• Trayset preparation combines food items, equipment and ancillary items to create meal trays for all passenger classes and for the crew. Every detail is important:  each piece of equipment handled by a passenger is individually washed, polished and checked prior to loading onboard.
• Bulk food preparation packs the a la carte items such as fruit baskets, cakes and cheese boards into the specified meal carts or containers.
• The output of the three teams is consolidated in to a total flight uplift by the Marshalling teams. An individual is assigned responsibility for each flight: they perform a final quality inspection and monitor the food temperature to ensure HACCP compliance, ensure the containers are correctly packed and labeled, security seal the flight (if required by the airline) and, after loading, handover the flight and brief the airline crew.
• In addition, Flight Preparation has a team that deals exclusively with the last minutes increases in passenger load by liaising with the flight handler and dispatching any extra items to the aircraft, and a team of cabin dressers that prepare the First and Business class cabins of aircraft with fresh flowers, top up he in-seat bars, ensure that fresh sleeper pillows and duvets are loaded and that the overall concept of customer importance is immediately visible on boarding

Airside Logistics transfers the complete flight uplifts to the loading bay and subsequently onto our fleet of refrigerated vehicles known as 'high loaders '. These vehicles are designed to elevate so that the uplift can be directed loaded in to the aircraft by the Airside Logistics teams. These teams, each with a team leader equipped with either a radio or mobile phone, will rapidly and efficiently offload the flight on arrival, load the new items ready for departure and perform a preflight check to ensure everything is correct. This seemingly simple task is made incredibly complex by the requirement for on schedule departures where at current peak period of activity, 75 arriving flights and 70 departing flights all require offloading and loading within a 3 hour window. The current volume of meal up-lifts averages to 77,470 per day.

Transport is responsible for maintenance and operation of our fleet of 97 high loaders and 106 support vehicles including refrigerated vans, staff buses and VIP cars for visitors. The key operational activity is the movement of the high loaders to and from the unit with the new or offloaded flights and the delivery of late requests and staff to the aircraft. In addition the function is responsible for over 200 daily staff transport journeys, vehicle leasing, liaison with the maintenance and fleet service providers and adherence to airside safety procedures and policies installed by Dubai Civil Aviation

Administration & Communications is responsible for ensuring that  information is received, interpreted and distributed to all departmental  functions in a timely fashion and coordinating operational information such as passenger loads and aircraft changes with other internal customers.

The dedicated Control Officeteams receive airline instructions through emails, faxes, SITA telexes, or verbally over the phone and then pass this information throughout the end-user departments using the CaterSoft ERP system and radios/ phones to the Airside teams.

The Administration team verifies, distributes and subsequently up dates menus, schedules and other reference information both on the shop floor and within the CaterSoft ERP solution. Documentation from all functions is collated, checked and used to generate the billing information for Finance. Administration also performs internal audits of operations activities to monitor adherence to the procedures and specifications, and coordinates general departmental administration including training schedules, HACCP documentation, airport pass applications and ISO Quality issues.

Safety (of our product and our team members), Quality and Security are key criteria that we strictly apply to the dynamic airline catering environment. The Operations Department is a tightly coordinated, mutually supportive team that operates cohesively to deliver a high quality service and food product at all times.

Up