A heavyset man dressed in a dark blue suit rose to greet us.
"You surely picked a bad night," Mr. Ingstrum said after we shook hands. He pointed to the snow-covered area outside the building where workers were busy loading baggage into an airplane. "Another two or three inches and we'll be closed-just like Philadelphia." He snapped his fingers. "That reminds me, excuse me a moment." He picked up one of the two telephones on his desk, tapped out a number, and a few seconds later asked: "Everything set for those Philly passengers on Flight 163?" He listened intently, said "Fine, thank you," and put the phone down.
"Flight 163 has forty-seven passengers on board for Philadelphia," he explained, "but that airport's closed, so when the flight arrives here we'll have to take care of them. Thank goodness they've had their dinner so all we have to do is get two buses to take them on to Philadelphia. When airplanes can't make it to their scheduled destination it can be rough on the station that has to receive them-especially if there's only a manager and a couple of agents on duty. If we close down later tonight I imagine flight dispatch will send the planes to Pittsburgh or Buffalo-they're both open, and I pity those stations!" He paused a second to glance out the window again. "Well, that's not your problem and I gather you want to know what a station manager does, is that right?"
"Correct. Could you first give us some idea of what your overall responsibilities are?"
He laughed. "Everything-actually I'm responsible for all the flight and ground operations here. That includes passenger services, air cargo operations, handling and servicing the airplanes. From the moment the passenger steps off the airport bus or out of the taxi until he or she walks onto the airplane and the aircraft pulls away from the terminal, I'm responsible." He paused for a second and smiled. "I forgot-of course, at the other end when the planes arrive-from the time the captain cuts the engines and passengers start to leave the plane, we're responsible for seeing that the customers get their baggage and find their transportation to the city, that the cargo and mail are properly handled, and that the air-plane is serviced and made ready for its next trip. Sound impressive?"
"Certainly does-but where do you fit into the organization?" we asked.
Mr. Ingstrum laughed. "A year ago I was under another department, now I'm part of the operations department, but in some airlines I'd report to the city manager instead of to the operations vice president. Airlines are forever changing their organizations, but it doesn't really matter. There's a big job to be done and everyone here works hard at it."
"What categories of employees does a station like yours have?" we asked next.
"Office workers: the usual stenographers, typists, and clerks, but not many of them." He bit his lip and looked at the ceiling. "Let's think in terms of entering the terminal," he said. "First there is the skycap that wheels in the passenger's luggage. That's an important job because often that individual is the first person to welcome an arriving passenger and the initial impression is important. Then, moving into the terminal we have the ticket agents behind the counter, the passenger service agents who also work at counters and in the departure lounges and the passenger service representatives. Moving out to the airplanes, we have our largest group of employees, the ramp service people-the men and women who service the airplanes at this station." He pointed out the window. "You can see many of them working on that airplane now."
Through the falling snowflakes we could see figures wiping the plane, loading cargo into the lower compartments of the fuselage, and two men up on a wing dragging a hose to refuel the aircraft.
"Everyone who works at this station takes orders from my staff," he continued, "although they may follow procedures drawn up by other departments as do the ticket agents and the maintenance people." He glanced at a memorandum on his desk. "I see you're going from here to the operations office in the hangar. That's entirely separate from us they serve the whole company-we just operate this station and service the airplanes in the hangar or on the ramp."
We asked Mr. Ingstrum about the ramp personnel. He told us that the term ramp is a bit misleading, for one of the definitions the dictionary gives is "a stairway for entering or leaving the main door of an airplane." However, at stations like this, passengers enter and leave aircraft from the second story of the terminal and no outside stairway is used. Thus the term ramp personnel has come to mean airline employees who service the inside and outside of a plane or work outdoors in the vicinity of an airplane. They could just as well be called "apron" personnel inasmuch as the apron refers to the paved part of an airport adjacent to a terminal building or hangar. Another term for ramp personnel is fleet service workers, which seems more descriptive of what they do.
When an airplane completes its flight schedule and the cabin is empty, the ramp service people swarm aboard, equipped with vacuum cleaners, brooms, dust cloths, and other cleaning equipment. The floor and seats are vacuumed, trash is picked up, headrests and pillow covers are replaced, blankets refolded and stored, seat packets refilled, head phones replaced, lavatories and buffets cleaned, and cockpit windows washed. If the aircraft is returning to service, this work may have to been done quickly and the job finished fifteen to twenty minutes before the first passengers start arriving.
Meanwhile, other ramp service people clean the exterior of the plane, using special brushes, sponges, mops, and hoses to do the work. They may work on scaffolding or in special lift equipment in order to reach higher parts of the airplane. Occasionally one of them may have to touch up the paint if there is a bad scratch or dent. If time permits an airplane may be towed into the hangar where this work is performed, but on a fast turnaround, the job must be done outdoors regardless of the weather conditions. Since most airplanes do not fly at night the heaviest work schedule falls during the night hours.
