Rula Fakhouri, Manager of Airline Services & TSA Compliance at Mercury Aviation Services, was recently invited to speak at a panel about preparing the next generation of air cargo carriers at the CNS Partnership Conference in Orlando on April 21, 2015. Rula has an extensive background in aviation and has been active in all aspects of the industry, working with both international and domestic air carriers. Her experience with Mercury has given her knowledge about the air cargo handling industry and freight forwarding as well. Before joining Mercury, Rula was self employed in her own aviation training company since 1997, IAC Training Inc. Rula’s background in aviation includes many years as station manager for large foreign carriers. Her knowledge of the aviation industry from many sides and her experience in all different divisions was a key component in being asked to join the panel at this conference.

In Rula’s vision for the next generation of the air cargo industry, she believes the future for these companies entails finding different ways to engage with employees, particularly in regards to recruitment. One example is reaching out to communities and giving high school students the chance to be mentored by current industry employees. Most people think pilots or flight attendants when they think of aviation careers, but the air cargo handling industry wants to put more of an emphasis on the diversity of careers that are available.

Another important trend for the future is a focus on training. Mercury does classroom training for its employees, because it wants to ensure TSA compliance. Mercury also wants to make sure its employees have demonstrative knowledge and understand what they’re doing, by learning TSA rules in a precise way. Mercury offers two reasons for this. First, Mercury wants to be able to bring employees up through the organization into leadership positions. Secondly, these employees (drivers, counter agents, etc.) are the frontline defense of aviation security; they need to understand security requirements, so if something doesn’t look right they know to report in the appropriate way. Mercury’s priority is making sure our staff understands both job and security requirements. This value is only going to become more important in the industry, with Mercury leading the way.

Mercury is already ahead of this trend, with a strong tradition of exceptional training for employees. Mercury views training as not just a requirement necessary for TSA compliance, but as a tool that can be utilized to help employees. “I’ve overheard customers say, that what sets Mercury apart is truly caring about employees and customers, and going great lengths to ensure employees have the tools they need. We spend the time to truly train our employees because we know they’re important and we want them to better themselves while providing better service to our customers.” Rula said.