Newspapers / Piedmont Aviation Employee Newsletter / Oct. 1, 1985, edition 1 / Page 3
Part of Piedmont Aviation Employee Newsletter / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
The Up-And-Coming Airline 3 Doug Anderson. Gray Fishel. Aubrey Warren (manager-air traffic services). Harvey Tedder and Tbm Cook, all dispatchers, watched the map closely as they followed Hurricar\e Gloria's path up theeastcoast. Each day our dispatchers follow almost l.OOOflight segments. Piedmont people hop To keep fleet safe From hurricane threats Friday, September 27, Hurricane Gloria roared up the East Coast de stroying much in its path. Our oper ations as far south as Myrtle Beach, and all the way up the East Coast to Massachusetts were affected, and to some degree, Gloria indirectly affect ed operations in other parts of our system. What happens to our people, our aircraft, and our schedules during a state of emergency of this kind? A core of people representing all areas of our operation work together daily with employees in the field to ensure a safe, effective, on-time airline. When Gloria became a reality, the jobs of these men and women in the Airline Operations Control Center (AOCC) intensified dramatically. "TWenty percent of our departures were cancelled, and our load factor for the day dropped to 45 percent,” Reggie Powell, staff vice president- operations control, said. "Our people made the difference. They did their job and did it well, with the end result being a good operation under extremely adverse conditions.” Gloria began to affect our operation the night of September 26. We elected not to leave any aircraft overnight at MYR, ILM, ORF, OAJ. ISO, or RIC. This meant 18 aircraft had to be diverted or cancelled short, which in turn resulted in cancelling the first legs of the trips for the next morning. "As the storm came in and con tinued its northerly movement, we closely monitored our operations from BWI north, and began suspend ing service as weather conditions dictated,” Powell explained. “We began service back to all cities as quickly as conditions allowed. We were one of the last to leave and the first to return to our markets, and we did that certainly with a safe opera- & --ar* tion. There were numerous com promises, but never on safety.” Powell attributes the success of our operation under such demanding conditions to a team effort by those in AOCC and the excellent cooperation received from the people out in the field. ”We were fortunate, for Gloria was an extremely strong hurricane that could have caused much greater damage to the East Coast," Powell added. "We were under considerable pressure, but that happens often, es pecially in the winter during snow and ice storms.” AOCC is located on the first lloor of the General Office in Winston-Salem. It includes six disciplines: Aircraft Routing, Flight Attendant Scheduling, Pilot Scheduling, Dispatch, Passenger Movement, and Maintenance Control. Aircraft Routing schedules the fleet for regular maintenance while meet- Left: Joe Lunsford and Jim Nazar- kewich (seated) and (I to r) Jim Thylor. Krista Flynt, and Al Beamon (manager) are in Maintenance Control. Below: Carol Hoover (seated). Jerry Overby, and Brenda Newson^e schedule aircraft for maintenance. Hoover and Overby are coordinators and Newsome, a supervisor. ing passenger schedule needs. These employees plan routes five to six weeks ahead, so a major disruption such as that caused by Gloria plays havoc with their work. Flight attendant and pilot schedul ers make sure we have crews al the right place and al the right lime. When llights are cancelled, crews must often be rerouted or new crews brought in. Dispatchers slay abreast of our nights, and hold, divert and/or cancel as conditions warrant, with the duty supervisor having the final say in the decision-making process over the sys tem's daily operations. On Septem ber 27, we cancelled approximately 200 departures. Passenger Movement follows the passengers and monitors flight inlor- mation. When irregularities occur that affect passengers, such condi tions are coordinated with Dispatch, stations, and the CRO by the passen ger movement coordinator to insure the customer is properly protected and well informed. Employees in Maintenance Control are available to our outside main tenance force and pilots for technical assistance. They interface unsched uled aircraft maintenance into the general operation. "Everyone here works closely together,” Powell said, "We have to look al the overall operation before any decisions can be made, and in most cases, these decisions have to be made quickly. Our work is compound ed when something like Gloria comes along, yet we have the dedicated peo ple to get the job done.” r i Piedmont now has over 1.900flight attendants whose schedules must be co ordinated with other departments. Four of the employees responsible for deter mining these schedules are (I to r) Dale Milikan. Bobby Stockton, Ron Hindson. and Carol Martin. Pilot schedulers include (I to r) Jack Clowney, supervisor: Tbm Rutkowski: Mike Thpler. senior supervisor: and A.T. Watkins, supervisor. In this department. schedules are made for more than 1,500 pilots.
Piedmont Aviation Employee Newsletter
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 1, 1985, edition 1
3
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75