Ground handling provider dnata is adding four fully electric apron buses to its fleet at Rome Fiumicino Airport, with the Cobus VEGA vehicles due to enter service by mid-November. The buses will carry passengers between terminals and aircraft, and dnata says it will be the first ground handler to operate the new model.
The VEGA buses were developed specifically for apron duty. According to dnata, they offer a higher passenger capacity than conventional airport buses, while redesigned doors are intended to speed up boarding and alighting and improved air conditioning is meant to raise comfort levels. The company did not disclose battery capacity, range or charging power.
Bus fleet grows beyond 40 vehicles
The four additions will take the Fiumicino bus fleet beyond its current 40 vehicles, of which 23 are already electrically powered. dnata presents the purchase as a way to make apron handling more efficient and to keep aircraft turnaround times as short as possible; it has not published figures on the time savings it expects.
The order sits within a modernisation programme in which dnata has invested more than €30 million over the past three years. During that period the company acquired more than 550 new ground handling equipment units at Rome Fiumicino, Milan Malpensa and Milan Linate, covering passenger buses as well as baggage tractors, conveyor belts, passenger stairs, aircraft loaders and pushback tractors.
The four new buses are a small share of the more than 550 units acquired since the programme began, but they are the part passengers encounter directly, because the buses carry travellers between terminal stands and aircraft.
Two routes away from diesel
Across the three Italian airports, dnata operates more than 1,000 motorised ground handling units, and more than 60 per cent of them now run on electricity. Where full electrification is not yet operationally feasible, the company is converting diesel-powered equipment to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). dnata has not specified how many units fall into that category, nor the emissions reductions achieved so far.
Charging infrastructure limits the pace
dnata says the pace of further electrification depends on the expansion of charging infrastructure at the airports, and that it is working with the respective airport operators on this. Its Italian business employs around 5,000 people and serves more than 60 airlines; across the three locations it handles over 150,000 flights, 46 million passengers and nearly 18 million pieces of baggage a year.