Good to know. Thanks. There are a bunch of guys there that really work their ass off, and it shows...we get out early, have all our bags, and everything flows well. I was told by ops the other day that, and I quote, "there are no working lav carts on the entire airport."
Then are the others I'm not so sure about...how they got the job in the first place is beyond me. I sat at one of the Alpha gates and watched for 20 (twenty) as the commissary guy stood there, compared the writing on the soda can to the writing on the como-request form and back again. Back and forth like that for about 3 minutes, then he pulled 2 cans of soda, and went to the next line. Took 20+ mins to fill one como order.
And then the time when they ran over a chock with the pushback tug and somehow managed to get the tug stuck between the ground and the nosewheel of an airplane, we counted 16 rampers standing around just watching, taking pictures on their cell phones and talking, while 3 other flights were waiting to load and push.
Was told by a supervisor last week that something is changing up there come Nov 1, any idea what that is?
I imagine working the ramp for IDE would have been fun (if they weren't trying to can you for doing your job).
Yeah. It's always a scene when a ramper does something stupid out there. As bad as it is for everyone, I couldn't help but laugh, because I saw it coming every time. Just looking at the "skill" out on the ramp, it's hard to imagine anything going right. There are a few really good guys out there, though. There's a guy named Robert who's milling about, out there. He's a good lead. I quasi-trained him a couple times. He didn't need much training, though.
As for IDE, working for them was great. I never had an issue with them. They seemed to understand the concept of discretion. In a bind, certain issues may be skirted, if necessary precautions are taken.
It was Air Wisconsin that sucked. The RGOM says one thing, they say another, another guy says something else. I was pushing a plane out one time and the capt said "tower says tail west" so I put the tail to the west. Coming in from the pushback, the other ramp lead yelled at me for breaking the rules. I told him tower said tail west, so I put it tail west. He got upset and called a Sup. The Sup, naturally, got upset about it. I explained that ground said tail west, so I put it tail west and he said something along the lines of 'they don't matter, listen to us.' To which I replied something along the lines of ground control is of higher magnitude than Wis control. He still didn't agree and wouldn't budge, so I just said it wouldn't happen again to get him out of my face. I, of course, listened to ground over Wis in the future, though.
The rest of the time, it was generally something to do with headset use. The RGOM (at least at the time) stated pushbacks without headsets are approved at the pilot's discretion, with a briefing between the operator and pilot. Since they rarely had headsets available for me, I just went without one and had a briefing each time. Of course, a supervisor was there to chew on me after a push or two. At one point, the problem was so bad that I went ahead and brought in my own DClarks so I could at least hear the pilots and not get yelled at.
I was just trying to make things work with what they gave me, while still minding safety and rules, but that wasn't good enough, I guess. They found my "Formal Apology," at one point, too. Figured out who Matt and Kyle were, found me on the ramp, took me inside and chewed on me for a while. That was fun and filled with irrationality.
As for the change next week, I imagine it might have something to do with a contract given to a company willing to service Air Wis' GSE, but I could be completely off. I'm just guessing that based on what changes could actually make an impact out there, and that when I left, we still didn't have a contract for GSE repair, to my knowledge (TUG was taking care of it, case-by-case...I think).