Fleet Care Program at Frankfurt Airport (EDDF)

Why choose a fleet program instead of booking each service individually?

Recurring work lets us reserve crew hours and materials for your tail numbers before the month starts, so you call with a slot and we confirm immediately rather than checking availability against transient aircraft. The flight department knows the monthly cost in January, operations books the service into the tech log as a line item, and finance sees one invoice instead of eight or twelve. When an aircraft goes tech or picks up a charter extension, the standing agreement means you telephone directly—no quote, no new purchase order—and we pull the allocated crew off a lower-priority job.

The twelve-month commitment also lets us learn your fleet: which cabin materials need no-touch treatment, whether the captain prefers gear-bay degreasing every second month, how much leading-edge polish the wings lose over a winter of de-icing ops. That institutional knowledge stays with the same technicians visit after visit, and every service note goes into a digital history file so that even a substitute crew can read what the last team did.

What does the service calendar include, and how do you build it?

We start with your published schedule—HomeBase legs, positioning flights, maintenance windows—and overlay the recommended cadence: a dry wash or waterless clean after every second or third flight, a full cabin detail once a month, an exterior wash and single-stage polish each quarter, and brightwork restoration twice a year. The calendar lives in a shared spreadsheet or your ops platform, and either side can move a service with forty-eight hours' notice if a trip changes. For charter fleets that release the schedule week by week, we agree a monthly target—four quick turns, one deep interior—and you call the day before each available block.

Seasonal work happens during natural gaps: we schedule the spring exterior and nacelle polish while the aircraft is down for phase inspection, and the pre-winter decon and sealant top-up goes in before the first forecast snow. The quarterly review with your operations team checks whether utilisation has climbed and the calendar needs more frequent turns, or whether a tail has flown less and we should bank the unused visits against an AOG call-out later in the year.

What changes at Frankfurt Airport that affects how the program runs?

Frankfurt Airport sits at 364 feet elevation twelve kilometres south-west of Frankfurt city centre, with four runways—three at 4,000 metres and one at 2,800 metres—and a court-imposed night-flight ban between 23:00 and 05:00 local. Operating hours run 05:00 to 23:00, with restricted movements in the shoulder periods 22:00–23:00 and 05:00–06:00, so any ramp work window for detailing effectively fits inside that 05:00–23:00 day. The General Aviation Terminal—Gebäude 514 on the south side—houses three handling agents: Fraport Executive Aviation, Business Aviation Centre Frankfurt (Kurz Aviation Service), and FAS Frankfurt Aviation Service. All business-aviation movements require a slot allocation because EDDF is a Level 3 fully coordinated airport under Fluko, and the GAT has its own customs and passenger-inspection facility.

For a fleet program those details mean three things. First, we schedule overnight detailing to finish before 05:00 or start after the last departure before 23:00, because no aircraft may move on the ramp during the ban. Second, every service visit appears in your slot request—even a thirty-minute dry wash counts as ground time—so operations must tell us the planned turnaround duration when they file. Third, because three handlers share the GAT apron, we coordinate with whichever agent holds your handling contract to ensure the aircraft parks on a stand where we can run a GPU and water truck without crossing another operator's safety zone.

How does priority AOG cover work inside the twelve-month contract?

Every fleet agreement includes 24/7 telephone access and a promise that unscheduled requests jump the queue. If your aircraft diverts inbound with hydraulic fluid down the fuselage, or a charter client walks onto a cabin that should have been detailed yesterday, you call the duty mobile and we pull a crew off the next scheduled job—usually a transient one-off booking—to meet your tail within two hours airside. The monthly budget includes a reserve of AOG hours; once you exhaust that reserve we invoice the extra time at the contract rate, still lower than the ad-hoc rate we quote to transient aircraft.

Priority also means we hold back materials: if the spring pollen season has every operator requesting an exterior wash, fleet aircraft go first and transient bookings wait or move to the following day. The same logic applies to equipment: a fleet tail that needs a scissor lift for a BBJ wash gets the lift even if a one-off customer asked three days earlier, because the contract guarantees you access to our full resource pool.

What do handling agents at Frankfurt expect when a third-party detailing crew works on the ramp?

Fraport Ground Services and the three FBOs at the GAT expect every third-party contractor to hold a current airside-escort waiver or be met by the handler's own escort. We maintain permanent EDDF airside passes for our crew, so the handler simply notifies the apron controller that we are walking to the stand; no escort fee, no waiting. The handler will ask for a written scope of work before the aircraft arrives—'waterless exterior wash, cabin vacuum, galley wipe-down'—because their ground-safety officer logs every activity near the aircraft and wants to know if we will open panels, run a GPU, or move the aircraft with a tug.

Water use is the other coordination point: EDDF environmental rules require any rinse run-off to be captured or directed into the apron drainage system, so a traditional hose wash usually happens on a designated wash stand rather than at the passenger gate. If your aircraft is already at the GAT and you want a full wet wash, the handler will either tow it to the wash pad or approve a rinseless method on the existing stand. We tell you which option makes sense for the turnaround time, and we notify the handler twenty-four hours ahead so they can schedule the tow or arrange the waste-water truck.

How does invoicing and service history work across a twelve-month program?

You receive one invoice per month, per tail number, listing the fixed program fee and any out-of-scope additions—an unscheduled brightwork polish, an AOG call that exceeded the reserve hours, or a cabin material replacement your crew requested on the day. The invoice references the service calendar so your finance team can match the charge to the planned visits, and a PDF summary shows which services were completed, which were postponed by mutual agreement, and which are scheduled for the coming month. If a tail leaves the fleet mid-contract or goes into heavy maintenance for six weeks, we pause that aircraft's fee and restart it when operations resume.

Every visit generates a digital service record: before-and-after photographs, a checklist of tasks completed, and any notes the technician logged—'port-side belly still shows exhaust staining, recommend additional degreaser next visit' or 'cabin crew mentioned galley seal starting to lift, monitored for next month'. Those records live in a shared folder your operations team can access any time, and they become the foundation of the quarterly review. At the end of twelve months you hold a complete appearance history for each aircraft, useful for pre-purchase inspections, lease return, or simply understanding how many hours of labour each tail actually consumed.