Location: Heathrow

Full time – Permanent

Salary - in the region of £28,500 including shift pay (basic salary £23,079 per annum)

Shift Pattern 7 days on / 3 days off / 7 days on / 4 days off various start times across both Early and Late Shifts, 8.5 Shifts from 04:15 (Early) 16:00 (Late).

Sign on bonus of £1,000, payable in two installments (£500 in month 3 and £500 in month 6) - external applicants only

This role qualifies for the referral scheme

In 2022 we handled over 12.1 million departing bags across Heathrow Terminals 3 and 5, up 159% versus 2021

The BA081 from London Heathrow to Accra, Ghana sees the highest volume of departing bags, with 209,000 bags carried in 2022 – that’s an average of 574 per flight.

As a Ground Operations Agent - working as part of the Baggage & Logistics team at our largest hub, Heathrow - you will carry out a variety of activities that are crucial to delivering a seamless journey for our customers’ baggage. You’ll be an essential component to delivering key customer satisfaction metrics such as punctuality, mishandled baggage performance and baggage delivery times - your tasks will be varied and will all significantly contribute to these metrics. Tasks (not exhaustive) could include: handling regular and over-sized baggage - or out of gauge (OOG) - such as buggies, golf clubs, ski’s and bikes, supporting other key baggage tasks such as head of stand (gate) baggage processing, baggage reconciliation / make up, baggage off-load support, delivering baggage containers (known as ULD’s, bins or ‘cans’) to departing aircraft and collecting arriving baggage containers and delivering / offloading them on arrival carousels or transfer inputs.

If you take pride in getting a job done right, this could be the role for you. It’s a crucial and mostly unseen operation around which every journey revolves. You need to be resilient, passionate about delivering a safe, customer-focused service and enjoy both indoor and outdoor shift work.

What you’ll need to join us:

Ability to carry out multiple manual handling tasks, including:

• The physical fitness to lift items weighing up to 32kg,
• Pushing and pulling of empty and full baggage containers onto equipment and stillages,
• Loading of bags into baggage containers (average of 35 bags with an average weight of 20Kg),
• Lifting bags above head height may be required,
• Placement and recovery of Aircraft chocks and cones on Aircraft stand,
• Attaching and detaching Ground Power Units to Aircraft.

Capabilities:

• Aged 18 or over at the time of application,
• The ability to work as an individual or as part of a team,
• The resilience to put up with the joys of British Weather,
• Fluent in both spoken and written English,
• Hold a valid passport (with minimum of 12 months before expiry date),
• Unrestricted right to live and work in the UK,
• Ability to obtain and retain an airside pass,
• Full manual UK driving licence, 6 months driving experience and no more than 3 points,
• Ability to be CAT 3 licence trained,
• Willing and able to work shifts covering 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

In return, you will enjoy working in an exciting, fast paced environment, underpinned by world-class training and fantastic development opportunities. That’s not to mention the competitive salary, shift allowances and generous concessions. You'll have access to a shift swap scheme which allows for flexibility and work-life balance.

At British Airways, we offer a wide range of flexible benefits such as:

• Flexible Benefits Scheme. Our new flexible benefits scheme is available to colleagues and will offer a range of benefits to choose from including a market-leading defined contribution (DC) pension, helping you save for the future. The scheme gives colleagues choice and more control over your benefits and how you spend the contributions that you receive from British Airways. The range of benefits to choose from include - critical illness cover, additional life insurance cover, private medical insurance, dental plan and healthcare cash plan.
• Fly the World (Staff Travel). From day one, you can purchase discounted commercial tickets, known as ‘Hotline’ tickets, for your own use or for friends and family. On joining, you’ll be eligible for unlimited standby and premium standby fares on BA flights, for you and your nominees. After a qualifying period this will extend to our partner airlines. After one year, you’ll also be eligible to one concession per year for you and your nominees to use on any eligible route on our network. Taxes and charges apply.
• Cargo Concession. After six months, you’ll be entitled to an annual cargo concession of up to 250kg to transport personal property on our network – you only have to pay 10% of the applicable Air Cargo Tariff.
• Well-Being. Wellbeing sponsors and advisers across British Airways promote a number of wellbeing and inclusion initiatives. We also offer a variety of other benefits to help you develop as a professional and stay healthy and productive.
• You can enjoy special discounts and savings on a range of products such as hotels to tie in with your staff travel trip.
• Car Parking. You can park for free for up to two weeks when you go on holiday, at our Westbase site near Heathrow.
• BA Clubs. Provides a wide variety of sports and leisure facilities, with free membership in your first year. Get involved in anything from athletics to yachting, angling to yoga.

This role is not eligible for sponsorship or visa sponsorship.