Logistics

Logistics

I guess I can cover a little ground on what it takes to even get a flight into the air, let alone the whole Captain thing. As I said, it takes quite a little bit to keep things going, and it helps if it all works in synchronicity. Yeah, dream on….

Ok… here is some of what it takes;

Obviously, anyone who has booked a flight knows a bit about reservations. Weather it be booking yourself online, through a travel agent, or calling the main reservations desk, there has to be a way to find out how many people are even interested in going. Now there are all kinds of ‘bean counters’ who work in the wild esoterica of numbers, yield management, etc. They take historic trip information, past passenger load factors, percentage of no-shows, holiday information, all of these things, and put together a plan for what is hopefully the most efficient use of aircraft and scheduling. I know, it does not seem like it, but these people make good money putting all this stuff together.

So right there, before we even get to the airport, there are millions of dollars spent just trying to set up the schedules and programs for the aircraft.. and the passengers.

From there, we can look at the operational aspects of our flight. We have to get all of these things together—the aircraft itself (concept, design, manufacture, parts supply, maintenance schedules, time limits, performance to match the original concept, modifications, FAA regs, and I am sure a few more things that I am forgetting;) the cockpit crew (set standards, solicit, interview, background check, winnow, train, schedule, retrain, and retrain again;) cabin crew (same concept- set standards, solicit, interview…;) maintenance personnel (recruit, train, schedule;) ground service personnel (ramp workers, fuelers, lav service, catering;) ‘in terminal’ employees (gate agents, ticket agents, reservation agents.)

That is just off the top of my head! In addition, all these people need training, to be paid, need benefits, etc. Every one of those commas in the paragraph above involve people designing a plan, setting schedules, and other support work. The support staff just to get to this point is quite enormous. Then there are the programmers, maintenance personnel who keep the terminals lit, plugged in, computers functioning, bathrooms dumping, clean, etc… it just keeps getting bigger!

And there is ATC, too…

And we don’t even have an airplane in front of us yet.

So, here we are at the gate, waiting for our bird to drop in, disgorge the inbound peeps, board us up, and then blast off. We’ll just say from here that all the people have been trained properly, etc… I know, I can dream, right?

A few hours before our flight is even ready, the weather personnel are putting forecast packages together for the country. They start way before sunrise for the early flights; it is a 24 hour operation. NOAA updates their forecasts every 6 hours; professional weather services have full time crews running forecast updates as often as they can. They put that information into the servers for the dispatchers to pull down based on departure, routing, destination, etc. A short time after this, about an hour before departure time, the dispatchers get their sets of flight information; basically what flights they should have… runs about 7-10 flights per dispatcher per hour. They get the weather information package together, compare it to what our ‘canned’ (pre-loaded) routes are, and hopefully they route us around the weather, and not through it. They put together the weather package, make sure it has all the proper weather/airport/route information on it, and load it for the pilots or operations to download. (This is in an ideal world… dispatchers still manage to route airplanes through crappy weather, and pilots still manage to accept those routing through crappy weather. We’re all human.)

The flight crew or operations will pull up the dispatch release about 45 minutes before departure time.

By this time, the cockpit and cabin crews should all be at the airport, depending upon their signin times (we’re not even going to go down the road of connecting crews, but you could have, on AA, a Captain, First Officer, and 3 Flight Attendants who are all coming off of different inbound flights to work the flight we are on. Try to schedule around that!) At Eagle, at least it’s 2 F/As at most who will misconnect their trips.)

All the crewmembers will sign in, check that they have all the latest revisions to manuals, etc. I know it sounds crazy, but we get updates constantly, due to changes in the way that ATC wants things handled, the FAA wants things run, the TSA wants security changes, the company has had something happen recently that was not covered.. changes are the only thing that does not change.

The Captain, and hopefully, the First Officer will read the release, noting all the pertinent weather data, Notices to Airmen (information on Navigational aid status, GPS information, runway closures, etc. Even with computer automation, these things get missed. It would suck to fly 4 hours to your destination, only to find that they closed the runway 30 minutes before you got there for scheduled maintenance, and they’re digging trenches in that runway at the moment,)

Basically, if it involves the flight, the Captain is supposed to know about it.

While this is going on, the cabin crew (Flight Attendants… Waitresses… Stews… Peanut-slinging wenches… ) (I prefer Flight Attendant,) is getting their act together; checking for notices about safety in the cabin, checking the loads for the flights, do we need anything special for this flight, all kinds of what-not. It seems like a lot of small stuff, and it is, but it really adds up in the big picture.

And we still do not have an aircraft in front of us at the gate yet.

Once the dispatcher releases the flight, operational information is sent to the station. So the refueling people get the fuel slip, the gate people get connecting gate info, planned arrival times are sent, are there scheduled delays from the ATC system? All of this information comes into play. If you are on a flight that serves a meal, Catering was ordered in a huge block order weeks ago, and that had to be planned for, scheduled, and prepared.

The maintenance operations people have been tracking mntc logs, as some things need to be checked every certain number of hours/flights/days. We’ll just say that there is nothing special about our aircraft today, but there are some lu-lus out there (oil consumption every 10 hours, landing gear inspections, all kinds of things with exotic lettering like TDMI, etc.) So nobody is planning on turning any wrenches on this bird.

So now, we’re ready to go---

Aircraft is about to land

Flight crew is ready and waiting

Ramp Personnel are ready

Gate peeps are ready

Catering is ready

Maintenance is ready

The Rampers marshal the aircraft onto the gate, the gate agent brings the jetbridge (Used to be made by Jetway Incorporated. What’s a Jet Weigh? I don’t know, a lot!) to the airplane, the pilots shut the motors down, the F/A opens the door, and we’re in business.

NOW we have an airplane….

Ramp crews bring their ‘tugs’ up to the aircraft, with beltloaders, to start unloading the bags. Fuel man pulls the truck up to the front of the wing and hops out to check how much fuel the plane arrived with in the first place. Passengers start deplaning, and heading on their way. The inbound FO (generally) heads down to do a ‘post flight’ inspection of the aircraft. Catering pulls up along the tail exit and starts to unload the inbound catering. Depending on the operation, maybe there is a mechanic there to do a quick walk around, too. The ramp personnel have to take all your inbound bags and sort them (they are pre-sorted a little bit; local bags go to the belt loader, connecting bags go to other flights, freight has to go to the freight house, US Mail goes another way, Cargo goes yet another…) All those connecting bags have to be taken to the correct outbound flight. Picture an inbound flight, 130 people, and 85 of them are connecting on a total of 35 flights. ALL of those bags have to make it to the right flight, right gate, on time, and get loaded, scanned, etc. It’s a miracle it happens at all.

By now, the pilots have walked away, the F/As are on their way to their next trips (fatigue!) and the outbound crew is coming down the jetbridge. The fueler has started putting the Jet-A into the aircraft (ORD – LAX on an MD-80 could easily be as much as 4000 gallons,) depending on what the aircraft arrived with. Ramp is unloading still, they have the connecting bags on the way, and the local bags are almost done unloading. Freight is on it’s way, and there was no US Mail, so that was a nice break. Catering is finished unloading the inbound food (perishables get destroyed in an incinerator. Packaged food may be reused, depending upon the operation (like cans of pop, or packages of snack bars, etc…) or some of it may be sent to local food banks [kudos to cities that have that.])

The Cabin Crew does their safety inspection before every flight; go through the cabin, look for things that were left behind, anything that is amiss, maybe something was broken by a passenger on the inbound flight, and the pax did not tell the F/As about it, and it has to be taken care of. This is also a security check. While this is going on, some ramp peeps come up and do a run though of the cabin to clean it (I know, my airline friends… ideal world.. BIG time.) They come on and restock the lavatory (toilet paper, Kleenex, hand towels, soap,) restock the galley (coffee, cups, cold drink cups… that is not always a catering function.)

The outbound crew has settled into their ‘nest,’ getting the aircraft set up for departure. They have their own safety checks, and a long list of items that have to be run or tested before every flight. At some point, the FO (especially if it is raining,) will get out, go down, and do an exterior inspection pre-flight, checking the condition of everything on the outside.

Now we are ready to board.

The gate agents call down to make sure the Flight Attendants are ready to board (hahahah!!! I know… ideal world.. ideal world.) Cabin is ready, safety checks are done, all pre-flight duties have been accomplished (most of these are on every flight,) briefing from the cockpit to the cabin is complete, and everyone is on the same sheet of music.

Fueler has topped off to the scheduled fuel load, and is waiting for a bag cart to be moved so he can get on to the net flight for the day. Ramp from other gates have been delivering a steady stream of bags from other connecting passengers, who are going out on OUR flight. Freight dropped off a couple hundred lbs of parts that need to be moved, and we’ve got 4 full baggage carts of bags to load up. And, of course, nothing was misplaced or misconnected from the inbound or any of the other inbound flights to get to us.

Here come the passengers.

Catering is done; they’ve loaded the food and taken the old stuff off the inbound, so they are on their way. Slowly more space is opening up under the aircraft. As departments finish their jobs, they move on to other flights, and slowly you can see more ground around our bird. Baggage is getting the last bags from a late inbound on another gate, and the gate agents are waiting for a few stragglers to make their way to the gate.

The flight crew checks with operations, and we’re fully loaded, and all the numbers match (bags, people, fuel, etc..) The FA in the front gets the paperwork from the gate agent on a passenger manifest, there is an exchange of pleasantries, and the door is shut.

The flight crew contacts the ramp crew over an interphone hookup. The ramp indicates that they have completed a FOD check (debris, etc) and the area is clear, and we’re ready to move.

All in 30 minutes. (sometimes)

To be honest, it is pretty dang amazing that it happens at all. When you consider AA… 300+ flights a day, in and out of ORD (only THAT airport)… in peak periods, 30K – 45K+ passengers/day… all that fuel (my last year fueling, we pumped 900,000 gallons a day… and we only fuel outbound flights, remember…) all those bags, all that food, all those people.

So that’s the basics. I know there are plenty of things that I am missing, too, which is kind of funny, that there is more!

We’re not even to the cost of all this yet. It is quite the capital intensive operation.

More to come.

Oh… I passed my oral exam for CA today. Life is good.

Cheers!