THE EVALUATION ON STANDARD

OPERATING PROCEDURE CONFORMANCE

LEVELS AMONG AIRLINE CATERING
OPERATION STAFF
Anwar Hamizan bin Alias, Dr Noraida binti Abdul Rahman
University of Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia Institute of Aviation Technology, 47200
Selangor, Malaysia

ahamizanalias@gmail.com

Abstract. This review paper, is to evaluate the compliance level to the standard operating
procedure among airline catering operation staff. Most of the airline operations staff tends to
not comply with the standard operation procedure whilst it have been provided by the
organisation or company to be comply with many ways of excuses. Even though with the simple
instructions, they will find their own way to do it by their own ways of doing it. As an operation
staff, they are expose to the aircraft and during loading or offloading, they have to work high
level of risk in terms of aircraft touching and also operating high lift at certain heights that are
expose to any kind of accidents. Thus by making this study, the researcher might be able to
observe the level of conformity to the standard operation procedure of the airline catering
operation staff and be able to evaluate the compliance of the standard operating procedure. On
top of that, the incompliance of standard operating procedure also might giving the airline
catering operation staff discomfort during operations activity and exposing them to potential
injury during fulfilling their daily routine.

1. Introduction
In the world of air transportation, it is almost ridiculous to not relate the in-flight catering with the
airlines industry itself because nowadays its common for most of the airlines provide the best in-flight
meals for their customer especially for those who are going to travel more than 1000 Kilometres
away. Flashing back to the history of the in-flight catering, the very first in-flight beverage was
consumed in the presence of Benjamin Franklin on the first manned hydrogen balloon in 1783. The
first thing they did was pop the cork on a bottle of champagne. In 1820 people took off in London and
flew 420 miles to Germany and being English aristocrats they brought port, champagne, and fifty
pounds of food. They did this because they weren’t sure how long they could stay aloft. They
invented the very first in-flight cooking. At the end of WWI the British Air Service flew from London
to India and brought along food in wicker baskets all eaten cold . (Nichols, 2015) This is the early
history of in-flight meals being served during flight even though there are no high-tech aircraft
invented during the days but they still served beverages and also food during flight. Therefore, the
first airline company known as Handley Page Transport are the pioneer in serving meals during flight
for London to Paris route in October 1919 with the selections of meals from fruits to sandwiches only.
From then, the growth of airline catering was increasing from time to time as many airlines are
compete among themselves to prove which airlines provides the best in-flight meals to be offered to
their customers.
2. Research Objectives
The above mentioned strategic aims of the research are sought through the achievement of the following
objectives:
i. To evaluate the compliance level to the standard operating procedure among airline catering
operation staff.
ii. To identify the possible factors effecting the front liners not to be complying the standard
operating procedure.

3. Limitation of Study
i. Time – Limited time provided to complete this research might affect the outcome and finding
of the research. The needs of the research to complete the report on the interviewee will require
more time compared to secondary data collection since the researcher will have to approach
each staff personally.
ii. Lack of communication respondent – The information from the interviewee is very important
to complete the research. Limitations occur when the data that been needed is private and
confidential, when the interviewee busy and also when the interview been made through calls.
iii. No access allowed to be at the Brahim’s SATS Food and Services – The latest hiring of Chief
Executive Officer by Singapore Airport Service Terminal(SATS) at Brahim’s SATS Food Services
have not given any permissions toward the researcher to make in-site interview with the frontliners and
also the top management at Transport and Logistics Department. This making the research have a very
limited amount of data and information being gathered as the information regarding airline catering is
very difficult to gain other else getting it at the airline catering premises itself. This also making this
research difficult and the researcher have to get the data and analysis with the minimum information
available for the research.

4. Literature Review
This chapter will cover the literatures of any in relation with the airline catering company, the
framework, common issues faced by the airline catering company, standard operating procedure, past
studies that can be found throughout the end of this section.

4.1.The Airline Catering Industry

In-flight meals are playing the very vital part in making sure fulfilling the satisfaction of airlines
customers because for the long haul flights, passengers somehow will order the meals throughout the
long haul flights so that they can stay comfortable and make sure they have enough energy to continue
their travel. As per defined by (Gani, 2016), the airline catering is a highly specialized skill, technology
as well as quality oriented food catering for the airline passengers and crew members with a better
emphasis on hygiene aspects and on time productions. Thus the airline catering playing the important
roles in achieving this goals. Marriott was one of the earliest inflight caterers as a result of innovative
actions by William Kahrl, the manager of a new Marriott Hot Shoppe across the road from Washington's
Hoover Airport (now Washington National Airport) in the late 1930s. First aerial restaurant[1925]: The
First aerial restaurant car in the world is now engaged on the regular London-Paris airway service. A
uniformed steward, the first aerial waiter, is in attendance, and passengers, and passengers on the
aeroplane can obtain hot and cold meals while flying thousands of feet in the air. (Gautam, 2014)
4.2 Standard Operating Procedure

A standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a set of written instructions that document a routine
or repetitive activity followed by an organization. The development and use of SOPs are an integral
part of a successful quality system as it provides individuals with the information to perform a job
properly, and facilitates consistency in the quality and integrity of a product or end-result. The term
“SOP” may not always be appropriate and terms such as protocols, instructions, worksheets, and
laboratory operating procedures may also be used. The main purpose of the SOPs are focusing on the
work processes that are to be conducted or followed within an organisation. The organisation will
document the way activities are to be performed to facilitate consistent conformance to technical and
quality system requirements and to support data quality. If the SOP are no being written correctly, SOPs
itself will have a very limited value. On the other hand, the best written SOPs will fail if they are not
being followed in accordingly. (Agency, 2007). An SOP, in fact, defines expected practices in all
businesses where quality standards exist. SOPs play an important role in your small business. SOPs are
policies, procedures and standards you need in the operations, marketing and administration disciplines
within your business to ensure success. (Centre) In aviation, Airline Catering companies are preparing
meals for airlines. They are responsible for adapting the production of industrial kitchen to the world of
aviation peculiarities.. (Stettiner, 2015)

5. Methodology
This chapter discusses the methodology used throughout this research project. There will be two
sections in this chapter. The first section will discuss on the methodology framework process flow and
in respect of the issues of the topic. The second section intends to describe data collection in this
research study.

5.1 Methodology Framework Process

The research methodology framework process shows the flow of the research project in chronologically
from the beginning of the project of determine the problem statement to the end result which is
presenting the conclusion and recommendation regarding the problems in the topic. The framework of
research process flow is as shown in the figure 5.1.

5.2 Data Collection

Data collection methods can be divided into two categories: secondary methods of data collection and
primary methods of data collection. Two types of data which are primary data and secondary data are
used in this research project to gather and determine the crucial information.
5.2.1 Primary Data
Interview survey
This data is being collected by distributing the questions survey by the researcher’s former boss at
airline catering. The target survey answered by the current catering officer, loader and also former
workers.

5.2.2 Secondary Data

Articles and Journal
The secondary data usually get from the books, journals, articles and resources that aready published.
For this study, a lot of data acquired from articles and journals that related to the topic and problems.

5.3 Data Analysis

Data analysis is the process of examining, assessing, observing and scrutinizing data with the purpose
of finding the important and applicable information, recommending the solution to the problem and
make a significant decision making.

5.3.1 Gantt Chart

Gant chart is used to show the research progress of the timeline and to guide in utilizing the 17 weeks
of specified time frame to complete this research project. The purpose of this chart is to show the work
progress from the beginning of the research starts from week 1 to week 17.

6. Data Collection and Analysis

The results of the analysis of the interview data, documentation and observation will be presented
in this chapter. The themes identified within the data include: (a) to evaluate the compliance factors to
the standard operating procedure among airline catering operation staff, (b) to analyze the impact of
complying SOP towards delivery operation. In this chapter, the researcher provides the data that has
been collected which will be analyzed as per to find out the findings. The genuinely of the data is
highly reflecting the company as the interviewee are employees whom had been working for more
than 5 years and are a part of the management team. The questions survey will consists of 12
respondents who have a background of working as airline catering operations staffs focusing on the
loading and unloading meal carts activities with experience working from zero to more than ten years
of experience.

6.1 Demographic Profile of the Respondents

Based on the set of question that were distributed during the survey, the researcher focusing
on what are the average age and also the most likely years of working experience with the airline
catering operations. This is also vital as the researcher wants to tackle the why the most experience
workers have the tendencies to not complying the standard operating procedure during performing
tasks. As known, most highly experience workers have done the same tasks as per the job description
mentioned in the standard operating procedure throughout their years of serving the company.
 Figure 6.1: Average age of the targeted airline operation staffs

Figure 6.1.1: The numbers of airline catering operation staff working experience
Based on the results gained above, the most number of age that still serving the airline catering at the
operation or transport and logistics department are around 20-30 years old as at this particular age
they are mostly are healthy and less problems regarding health conditions. There are still workers that
are aged 40-50 years old that are serving as catering loader, assistant and officer. Based on the
information told by the former head of transport and logistics department Mr Sulhan Abdullah, the
long serving catering front liners will be promoted to the management department, as they are no
longer competent due aging and health factors.
Based on the working years’ experience with the airline catering company, most of them are
still new and not familiar with the standard operating procedure provided by the company. Even
though the company already give them training and courses for their tasks, but they still find they own
excuses in not following fully the standard operating procedure provided by the company. The former
head of transport and logistics department, Mr Sulhan Abdulllah confirms this as, ‘Most of the new
workers at the operations department have the unfamiliarity in performing the tasks given and their
job description as they need the experience in mastering the tasks compared to the longer serving
workers. Thus they are most tend to not complying the standard operating procedure as they want to
make the tasks faster and in their own way.’
6.2 The Conformance Level of Standard Operating Procedure
For this finding, the researcher want to know whether they are complying with the company’s
standard operating procedure during fulfilling the loading and unloading meal cart activities at the
aircraft even from the inbound area to the airside. This can be shown on pie chart below.

Figure 6.2: The percentage of workers that complying the standard operating procedure
Based on the results gained above, around 66.7% out of 12 respondents still indicates that they
are complying with the standard operating procedure with the mix percentage of 16.7% of not
complying and sometimes answered by the respondents. This result is a positive number collected by
the survey, as they are still aware with the importance of the standard operating procedure during
performing tasks given as per job description stated in their standard operating procedure. This is mainly
due to the respect of performing the task still available, as they still need the standard operating
procedure in making sure all the tasks are being done in accordingly.
Even though they are still complying with the current standard operating procedure, they still not
complying it sometimes with their own reason of not complying it. The results can be gathered by the
pie chart below.

Figure 6.2.1: The percentage of common reason not complying the standard operating procedure
Based on the results gathered above, the highest number of reason of not complying the
standard operating procedure is because they are performing the tasks more quickly with their own way
by neglecting the prone of doing error and potential of involving in accidents and incidents during
performing their task at the airside. This is the risks that the company should look at because most of
them are more focusing on performing the tasks fast and not think about the hazard of not complying
the standard operating procedure while fulfilling their tasks. The result gathered have given slight shock
to the researcher as the researcher targeting the main reason of not complying standard operating
procedure is due to the repetitive task to do each day even though around 16.7% respondents contend
with it.
In according to the current Standard Operating Manual (SOP) Loading and Unloading Activity, they
will start do the checking of every meal to ensure tally with the meal ordering list of the airline and
when it all complete will be load into the hi-lift then departure to from the outbound area to the aircraft
for uplift meal. The activity of the front liner begin before 2 hours of Standard Time Departure (STD).
During the 2 hours before STD, the workers will have to well organized their work therefore this is
when they start to not complying the standard operating procedure and will do the tasks given in their
own way.The causes of Mishandled Baggage Cases in MAB
In Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB), under the attributable category, there are five reasons of the
category that contribute to mishandled baggage cases and the reasons are tagging errors, short shipping
errors, loading errors, arrival errors and transfer errors.

Figure 6.2.2: The common situation not complying standard operating procedure
Based on the result gathered above, the most common situation that lead to the incompliance
of standard operating procedure is due to the rushing to complete the loading or offloading activities at
the aircraft as most of the frontliners have a massive amount of assignments assigned to them in a day.
High number of 50% in terms of percentage frontliners finding it the rushing situation as their best
answer for not complying standard operating procedure. This is because the number of assignments in
a day could up to 12 aircrafts in a day as they are not only responsible in making sure the meal are being
send to the aircraft they also responsible in making sure all the meals are in according to the
customer(airlines) requirement at the assembly sections.
 In the world of operations, the noncompliance of standard operating procedure will definitely
give impact to the process flow of the works itself. This is proven by the high rate of accidents and
incidents occurred during fulfilling the tasks. It is also a serious breach which is likely to affect to a
significant degree of offences and high rate of risks regarding safety the frontliners and the personnel
around the frontliners during fulfilling the tasks. In according this, the frontliners also need to make
sure they are complying the standard operating procedure during loading and unloading activities at the
aircraft to prevent any accidents that may damaging the aircraft.

Figure 6.2.3: The number of Respondents agree on not complying SOP lead to accidents/incidents
Based on the results by the survey above almost 60% of respondents agree that not complying
the standard operating procedure does gave impact and could lead to accidents and incidents at the
workplace or even at the airside. This numbers indicating that the frontliners still aware that the
standard operating still important in making sure the tasks are being done through smoothly and the
most importantly safely. This result also important indication because the rate of awareness of the
important of standard operating procedure among frontliners are still positive even though 41.7% of
them still have mixed feelings on the importance of the standard operating procedure at workplace.
This result also are supported by the reason or causal that lead to the incidents and accidents
itself as some of them have their own reason of not complying and following the standard operating
procedure.
 Figure 6.2.4: The number of percentage tendencies towards incidents/accidents
Based on the research survey taken above, around 58.3% of the respondents agreed that 58.3% the
tendency of that leads to accidents during loading and offloading activities are due to the peer
pressures which indicating the pressure from the bosses and colleague during performing the task.
This is due to the tight schedule given on that particular day as during peak season, there are high
number of flights that the frontliners need to entertain. The peer pressure also leads to the clumsiness
and carelessness of the frontliners because they will find the best way not to comply to the standard
operating procedure at that time. In aviation world, in spite of its beauty and interesting, it is also
extremely hostile. It is full of stresses, false dilemmas and advice that can impact our judgement and
decision making. To function safely and effectively in this environment, and to apply our airmanship
skills appropriately, we must understand the multiple external factors that impact upon our decision
making, some of which come from unlikely source, our friends and associate, which we call it peer
pressure. Peers play an important role in our normal daily life. We can define the peer pressure as a
suggestive social presence that prompts are to conform to others, to be part of a group. It is lies in two
fundamental needs of all human being which are the desire to be liked and accepted and the desire to
be right. Peer pressure always asks for action but sometimes it suggests inactive compliance. It can be
obvious or subtle, verbal or non-verbal and its origin may be personnel or organizational. Sometimes
peer pressure is unintentional, while other times it is carefully calculated. We can say that, peer
pressure is a powerful force that can bend judgement. In aviation, peer pressure often manifests itself
in poor decision making but sometimes can be positive force as well.

7. Conclusion and Recommendation

The conclusion of a research paper is to summarize the purpose and the result or finding of the research.
The objective, content and result are summarized to show the overall picture of the research and after
this process, related recommendation will be give according to the data or the problem of the research.
7.1 Project Conclusion
Again, the first objective of this project is to analyse the impact of complying SOP towards delivery
operation. The research were carried out to identify what are the factors of noncompliance standard
operating procedure and process throughout the work flow. The data was collected with the cooperation
from Brahim’s SATS staff and contactable head of department.
Based on the study, it was found that the full utilization of standard operating procedure is vital in
making sure all the process flow and workflow of any activities are being done in accordingly and
without any hassle. The development and use of standard operating procedure minimizes variation and
promotes quality through consistent implementation of a process or procedure within the organization,
even if there are temporary or permanent personnel changes. The standard operating procedure can
indicate compliance with organizational requirements and can be used as a part of a personnel-training
program, since they should provide detailed work instructions. It minimizes opportunities for
miscommunication and can address safety concerns. When historical data are being evaluated for
current use, standard operating procedure can also be valuable for reconstructing project activities when
no other references are available. In addition, standard operating procedure are frequently used as
checklists by inspectors when auditing procedures. Ultimately, the benefits of a valid standard
operating procedure are reduced work effort, along with improved comparability, credibility, and legal
defensibility. All of information regarding the new procedure of the new aircraft should be recorded
quickly to avoid any problems and miscommunication during fulfilling the task. It is also defined that
different types of aircraft, there are also different way of unloading and loading processes involved with
the actions are being observed by the customers(airline) itself.
As for the second objective gathered, which is to analyse the impact of complying standard
operating procedure towards delivery operation. The research is carried out to get to know whether the
caterer has been producing an outcome whether they are aware or not regarding the impact of
noncompliance of the standard operating procedure. Thankfully most of the frontliners that are working
with the aircraft each and every day are still aware the importance of the standard operating procedure
even though some of them hoping that the company minimizing the impromptu procedure that are
repetitive although all the process are from the customers itself. This leave to the top management on
how to tackle any unnecessary procedures that could affect the on time delivery and performance of
their employees. Most of them also aware that noncompliance of standard operating procedure may
have the tendencies in involving with the accidents and incident at the workplace which are most of the
employees and employer want to avoid.
Thanks to the cooperation of the experienced frontliners that are willing to taking part with the
survey and also interview which are being done with the assistance of the head of transport and logistics
department, Mr Sulhan Abdullah in gathering the information that the researcher needs. Future
Recommendations.
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