Airside learns how ground handling provider Aviator Airport Alliance, which offers services at 15 airports in Scandinavia, is optimising its operations with a refreshed roadmap
Aviator Airport Alliance has begun 2026 with a clear purpose: ensuring operational excellence for every take-off. With its updated strategy in place until 2030, Aviator has renewed its commitment to six key areas: safety, its employees and partners, sustainability, innovation, and growth.
In particular, the company is emphasising that its first priority is safety and following procedures for every task and turnaround. “We do that well today. Our statistics are good, and the feedback from our customers is also good. However, we want to be the best. We want to be the benchmark for everybody else,” says Jo Alex Tanem, CEO of Aviator Airport Alliance.
The firm’s focus on safety also extends to its GSE fleet, which the company has constantly strived to enhance with new technology alongside robust training systems. Notably, it is looking into different training methods that may be required for younger generations due to reduced attention spans, such as micro-learning. This strategy also applies to Aviator’s new setup for its internal communications, which is just as much about sending out the right amount of information as the right content.
Strong communication, Tanem says, is vital to fight complacency. “Complacency is something that is out there if you have done the exact same task for years and years,” he says. “It is something that we are really, really attacking.”
When it comes to recruitment, Aviator aims to be the preferred employer at the stations where it operates by strengthening its leadership and workplace culture. It has introduced initiatives targeted at growing the number of women across the organisation, particularly on the ramp. A quarter of Aviator’s ramp employees are women, and it is committed to building on this progress, particularly due to the benefits it brings to the company’s culture and environment.
“It’s outdated to associate ramp work with physical strength alone,” he says. “Proper techniques and safe working methods are what really matter.”
“There are absolutely no barriers whatsoever, in my head, for women to also work on the ramp, and that’s where we need to get them,” he adds. The company is also working on encouraging women into leadership roles in middle and top management.
Customer retention is another major priority for Aviator. According to Tanem, the company received even better feedback from clients in 2025 than previous years, and is striving to strengthen these relationships further going forward. “We have very high customer retention already today, so it seems that our customers want to stay with us, but we are going to further enhance the partnership that we have with customers,” he says.
Sustainability has been a growing concern across the aviation industry, and Aviator is no exception in this area. A robust environmental policy, including proof of how the company offsets its carbon emissions, is now indispensable to customers and its partnerships with airports. Alongside publishing an annual report on its environmental performance, it has concentrated on electrifying its GSE fleet.
“More than anything, we are doing it for ourselves,” says Tanem. He notes that electrification offers benefits not only in lowering emissions, but also in reducing noise and enhancing efficiency, as electric units require less frequent maintenance.
Aviator had set the ambitious target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2026; however, infrastructure and supply challenges have contributed to the company cutting emissions more slowly than it had planned. “We need HVO fuel to be able to do this – we cannot do it with regular diesel,” says Tanem. “We also need the source of electricity to be in place. So, the infrastructure around us hasn’t been what we expected, but we are also not changing to electric as fast as we were hoping for.”
The company now plans to reach carbon neutrality well before 2030, supported by a concrete plan developed in collaboration with stakeholders.
Moreover, Aviator is bolstering innovation in an effort to cultivate a digitally-driven environment. As well as implementing new revenue management software, the company has an upgraded safety reporting system, allowing employees to take photos directly with their phones and enhancing ease of analysis.
“By 2030, we are going to be the leader of the pack when it comes to digitisation, where we can,” says Tanem.
He notes that he no longer sees any knock-on impact from the pandemic on the ground handling sector. However, certain Nordic regions where Aviator is active are experiencing challenges. Sharing a border with Russia, Finland is struggling with a shortfall of Western carriers operating routes over the country, while Sweden is facing issues with the flyskam (flight shame) movement that emerged in 2018 amid growing environmental concerns.
Though it is working on several projects outside of Europe, Aviator has not yet been able to expand beyond the Nordics. Going forward, the company is aiming to change this by concentrating on emerging markets. “We have grown very well within the Nordics,” notes Tanem. “We had high year-on-year growth in 2025, which we also expect to carry with us into 2026. We won quite a few big contracts from our competition in 2025 […] and we are starting a couple of big ones now in 2026.”
“However, looking outside of the Nordics is more of a priority focus than it’s been before,” he adds.
“When we show our quality and our KPIs, I believe airports will want us there, customers will want us there, markets will want us there. So, the key is in being the best at what we do, where we are.”
