Global Load Control is a subsidiary company of the
Lufthansa Group, and was established in
Cape Town,
South Africa in 2004. The company provides remote weight and balance and load control services to its parent company Lufthansa as well as other airlines.
Global Load Control operates from its three centers in Cape Town,
Brno
Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...
and
Istanbul.
These three centers handle more than 140 Lufthansa stations and process some 1800 flights a day.
Global Load Control's operations center in Cape Town became Lufthansa's first load control center outside of
Germany.
Before this, Lufthansa maintained two centralized load control centers in
Munich and
Frankfurt.
History
*2004 : Global Load Control founded by
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding m ...
in
Cape Town,
South Africa
*2007 : Second operations center established in
Brno
Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...
,
Czech Republic
*2009 : Third operations center established in
Istanbul,
Turkey
Controversy
Lufthansa's decision to open a centralized load control center outside of
Germany was unpopular with Lufthansa load controllers based in
Frankfurt and
Munich as they feared the loss of their jobs. Union involvement for a time prevented long haul flights departing from Germany to be processed by the new load control center in Cape Town.
Lufthansa's move to
outsource
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
its load controlling needs to its centers in Cape Town, Istanbul and Brno where motivated by more affordable operations costs. The cost of processing flights outside of
Germany are around 30 percent cheaper.
Another motivating factor that influenced Lufthansa to outsource its load controlling to Cape Town, Brno and Istanbul was due to the high number of German expatriates and local inhabitants with a good knowledge of German living in these cities.
In 2008 concerns were raised as to the quality of work the Global Load Control center in Cape Town was able to deliver, with one client airline calling for Lufthansa's load control operations for
Frankfurt airport to be moved back to Frankfurt. In response to this criticism, Lufthansa has stated that a move towards remote centralized load controlling and from manual loadsheets to electronic loadsheets was in the airlines best interest, and that steps have been taken to address the concerns about quality.
Since then, Global Load Control has received its
Dekra ISO 9001:2008 certification, and states on its corporate website that it is committed to ...''producing a quality service by focusing on the principles of safety, punctuality and economy''..., and that its quality management systems are continually reviewed and improved.
References
External links
*
{{Lufthansa
Lufthansa
Business services companies established in 2004