My Stint in the Airline Biz Part 1

In the beginning…

I started working for United Airlines at FSD, the regional airport in Sioux Falls, SD in February of 2000. I spent two weeks in Houston for ramp training, learning how to load 737s and 757s, and how to drive the pushback tractor to move (push) the aircraft away from the gate. After that I worked afternoons and evenings on the ramp at FSD. I liked the physical work, made a few mistakes, but was well schooled by my coworkers. I still have my United ramp vest. I wear it sometimes walking the dogs.

One day I climbed on a tug (a 4-wheeler) to take a load of bags out to the plane. Somehow I put the tug into reverse instead of forward and backed into the cheap pressed wood cupboards in the back of the bag room. A piece broke off and I was summarily fired. The union stepped in and after an investigation said I should not have been fired and declared me eligible for rehire.

However in the interim, United had decided to pull out of FSD. Air Wisconsin, a regional airline operating as United Express would be taking over ground handling the Sioux Falls station in June of 2000. So I applied and became an Air Wisconsin employee. We had to go through nine weeks of training, being gone for a week at a time. We were issued paper tickets for flying to and from training locations.

At the time our son Christopher was 13 and our son Mike was 10. My husband Ernie ran a bread route for Sara Lee and left for work around 1 am every day. We hired a neighbor lady who worked doing odd jobs like house cleaning and babysitting in our small community. She stayed every night and got the kids off to school and took care of our dog. I’m not sure what we’d have done without her.

We spent several weeks in classroom training in Denver and Chicago. One week in Denver fell during the kids Easter school break, so I took them with me. Since I had worked for United (albeit briefly) the lobby agents put me in first class whenever possible. The kids had to sit in coach, but the flight attendants took them bagels or donuts, whatever they were serving up front.

During the nine weeks, being away from home and family got stressful. One day during our several weeks in Denver, a co-worker asked how the kids were doing. I just started crying. I’d run out of paper tickets and hadn’t thought to pick up more in the station while we were home. I stayed for the weekend with a good friend who lived in the foothills of the Rockies. We had a great visit, but I really wanted to be home.

My training group next headed to the airport in Rapid City, SD for on the job training at the station. The first thing that happened was a historic snowstorm in mid-April, bringing 22 inches of heavy, wet snow to the city. Our little group managed to get to the airport the day after the storm. The station employees were rude and told us they were too busy rebooking passengers to teach us or let us practice. Eventually they let us do a few things, but I was glad to be done with that station.

We sometimes flew back from RAP to FSD on a Mesaba Airlines Saab 340 turboprop operating as Northwest Airlink. It was a cool little plane that buzzed along at 10,000 feet and 205 knots. I loved looking out the window at the countryside below. You can see so much more detail at that altitude and it was very relaxing.

This image is courtesy of the Northwest Airline History Center.

We always stopped in Pierre, SD to pick up passengers. On our first trip I thought I’d missed boarding and panic stricken, rushed through the security door and onto the restricted area of the ramp, which was a serious infraction. Of course it set off all kinds of alarms. Our station manager sat me down for a chat when I got back, but nothing more ever came of it. Believe me, I never did anything like that again!

Probably the most stressful time of training was in Appleton, WI, Air Wisconsin’s home base of operation. We spent two weeks learning ticketing and gate. We had a good group except for one woman. She was my age (mid-40’s) but looked and acted much older. She had a hard time learning, asked endless questions and slowed all of us down.

Our instructor was a former American Airlines gate agent. She’d worked quite a bit in Miami and told all kinds of stories. She had annoying mannerisms and talked way too much. My friends Helen and Tim and I snickered and made fun of her privately, at our desks. We decided we’d like to duct tape her mouth shut and the next day, Tim slapped a big roll of duct tape on his desk.

All three of us lost it. We couldn’t stop laughing. Our instructor was pissed, separated us and moved us to the front of the classroom. I don’t know if she ever figured out what we wanted to do with the duct tape, but it was the best moment of the entire two weeks. The three of us must have really gotten to her because we found out later that she put permanent comments in our personnel files about us causing problems. Can you say…bitch!

To deal with the stress of being away from home going on seven weeks by this point, plus our idiot coworker and snarky instructor, we hit the bar at the hotel every afternoon as soon as we got back from class. We all had some issues going on at home that we couldn’t take care of. I called one afternoon and Mike was upset, crying because he missed me. Christopher told me about a kid bullying him on the school bus.

I called the lady at the school in charge of busing and described the problem. She had a reputation for being no-nonsense and tough to deal with. She said, well maybe you should take your kid off the bus. I said no, maybe you should do something about the kid causing the problem. She was quite taken aback. I don’t think anyone had ever dared counter her. She hemmed and hawed and said she’d see what she could do.

In desperation I called the bullying kid’s mom. I explained the situation, that I couldn’t be home and was there any way maybe she could intervene. She apologized and said, don’t give it another thought. I will take care of the problem. I don’t know what she did, but Christopher never had a problem with that kid again.

Flying home from Appleton, we had to go first through Chicago, then Denver, then to Sioux Falls. For some reason we couldn’t fly on Atlantic Coast, another United Express carrier with direct flights from ORD to FSD until we completed our training. One Friday afternoon was especially hectic in ORD. We were in the C concourse and it was wall-to-wall people surrounding three gates.

The gate agents were harried, under stress trying to get the planes boarded and one lady kept asking irritating questions. Finally the gate agent said, get in line. We’ll help you when we get to you. The lady turned, tears forming in her eyes, staring at the sea of people and wailed, there’s no line! We all looked at each other, thinking oh shit, will we have to deal with this kind of stuff? We had no idea what awaited us…

That day, I got business class on a 747 to Denver, while my coworkers got stuck in coach. It was a nice ride to Denver. From there we got on the BAe 146, the biggest jet Air Wisconsin flew at that time. It had four engines mounted on pylons under the wings and a T-tail. It usually held around 100 passengers and looked like a big gray guppy to me. This was our first time flying on the guppy jet.

I was sitting across the aisle from Tim. After we took off and as we ascended to cruising altitude, the plane made strange groaning sounds. Tim looked at me, eyes wide and said, now ain’t the time to be shuttin’ shit down. As we descended into Sioux Falls, the noises commenced again and we figured out it must have been the flaps adjusting. Here’s a link to an image of an Air Wisconsin BAe 146. The photo is copywritten so I cannot post it here.

BAe 146 https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/5615946

Our nine weeks of training finally ended at the beginning of June, United pulled out and we started running our AWAC station at FSD. And that is a whole other story. Next time!