Situational Awareness; Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown
General None Reported / Taken
Airport; Environment - Non Weather Related; Staffing; Procedure; Human Factors
The company needed to pull record numbers of aircraft out of service because of COVID-19 reduced loads by about XX%. Because of that the towing team has been inundated with work. We have planes parked in remote areas across the entire airport that were not designed for aircraft storage. I could almost justify it if these were one time moves for planes being parked long term; but as it turns out we seem to be rotating about YY% of them in and out of service a couple times a week. The places we are working in do not have lead in lines or stop marks for any of aircraft types so we are forced to use our best judgment on what safe distance is between aircraft; and where to stop them. There is no standard operating procedure on how much space there has to be between aircraft so we are winging it as best we can. Instead of following taxi [lines] or lead in lines that were orchestrated for the safe movement of aircraft; we are having to choose cracks in the concrete to use as a reference in the hopes that it will give us the clearances that we need to reach our destination safely. We are working shorthanded about ZZ% of the time. I understand the company needs to cut costs. I do find it a bit odd that we do not even have a safety advocate in times like these when we probably need them most. We had one prior to COVID; but [the individual] has since been put back on the team numbers to move planes. We do have safety procedures in place that work really well in conventional times; but nothing we are doing now could be considered conventional. It would be nice to have an advocate we could turn to for advice and concerns. The warning system is in place in all our tugs and are always used by the drivers and observers; but with our increased workloads we are using setup crews to help reduce the time it takes for each move and they don't have the warning systems at their disposal until the aircraft has arrived.
Ground employee reported large numbers of aircraft are being moved in and out of storage without proper procedures in place.