BUSINESS

Meet the people who make sure your bags and plane leave the Milwaukee airport on time

Joe Taschler
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In airport parlance, it’s known as “the ramp.”

To just about everyone else, it's the place where airplanes park.

Southwest Airlines ramp agent Shane Geary shows his "hospitality gloves" between flights on the ramp at Southwest Airlines facilities at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee.

It's also where some of the toughest work in the airline industry is done, a mechanical ballet carried out on a massive scale against unrelenting time pressure, where noise and dirt and jet fuel exhaust are often punctuated by brutal heat, drenching rain and bone-rattling cold. 

The folks who work for Southwest Airlines on the ramp at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee say they wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Southwest recently invited the Journal Sentinel to observe its baggage ramp agents in action at the Milwaukee airport.

"I grew up in Tulsa. When I was a kid I used to take the bus to airport just so I could watch them load and unload airplanes," said Chris Barbre, customer service manager for Southwest in Milwaukee. "The first time I actually got a job doing this, you talk about a kid in a candy store. ... 'This is awesome!'

"Once you get in the business you can’t get away from it because you miss it," he added. "Once a ramper, always a ramper."

Perhaps taken for granted by passengers focused on getting to their destination as quickly as possible, the ramp is a place where an airline can make or break its on-time performance.

Southwest is the market share leader in Milwaukee, carrying at or just under half the passenger traffic at Wisconsin's largest airport. 

A Southwest Boeing 737 inbound from Las Vegas pulls up to the jetway at a gate in the C concourse. It's headed back to Vegas in a little more than 30 minutes.

"Once the door opens, the clock starts," said Tony Niehaus, manager of ramp and operations for Southwest at Mitchell.

The plane's baggage has to be unloaded and loaded, something that the rampers take very seriously, even if it sometimes looks as if they are haphazardly tossing bags all over the place. 

It turns out that bags have to be carefully stacked in the belly of the plane to evenly balance and distribute weight on a flight. Rampers also are counting bags as they load them to make sure the totals match what passengers have checked. 

Strollers and wheelchairs get extra attention and require extra time to load. 

"You don’t want too many bags at the front or too many bags in the back of the aircraft," Niehaus said. "Everything is happening simultaneously and (needs to happen) flawlessly.

"It really is a big ballet."

RELATED:Clearing Mitchell's runways a choreographed snow dance powered by massive diesel engines

There are three ramp agents per flight, with one roving ramp agent to help during busy times.

Once the aircraft is ready to leave, the ramp crew that unloaded and re-loaded it pushes it away from the gate. This involves one crew member driving a push-back tug and the other two serving as "wing-walkers" near the wing tips. They carry blaze orange batons and are watching to make sure there are no obstructions on the taxiway and no irregularities on the outside of the aircraft as it departs.  

Any one of them can halt the departure if they see something unsafe. 

Once in position, the rampers disconnect the tug and the aircraft engines rev as the plane makes its way to a taxiway and runway for takeoff.

For Southwest, the process takes place about 4,000 times a day across the country.

Handling bags is a big deal

Southwest has made "Bags Fly Free" a cornerstone of its marketing and branding identity, much to the displeasure of Wall Street.

Southwest counters that Main Street doesn't like paying for checked bags and estimates that its policy generates $1 billion in additional business each year.

"It has become a big brand advantage for them, and that probably means they sell more tickets," Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorks Co., an airline and travel industry consulting firm based in Shorewood, said of the free checked baggage policy.

"So I think they are justified in keeping the status quo. And you won’t hear that out of my mouth very often regarding airline fees," Sorensen added. "They have positioned themselves so solidly on this feature that I just can’t see them abandoning it, period."

For the rampers, that means handling bags is a big deal.

"You treat the bag as if it’s your own or your mom’s or your grandma’s," Barbre said. 

Virtually anyone who has spent time flying commercial airlines has their own personal baggage horror story.

"It’s personal when a bag is lost," said Dan Landson, a spokesman for Southwest. "At the end of the day, you don’t know why someone is traveling or what they are carrying with them. Wedding dresses. Someone’s luggage could have the interview suit they need to get a job.

"Every seat has a story."

So does every ramper, including Southwest's Shane Geary in Milwaukee. 

Geary wears what he calls "hospitality gloves."

One says "Thanks for flying Southwest." The other says, "Come back and see us."

He loves waving to passengers, who are a few stories up looking down out of the aircraft windows.

"It’s just an amazing response," he said, estimating that passengers use their phones to take his picture at least a dozen times a day. "I enjoy doing it. So much happiness."

Geary is also the un-annointed hydration czar on the ramp for Southwest in Milwaukee. 

"If I’m here, everybody gets fresh Gatorade," Geary said. "I make a fresh batch every single day.

"They are my own personal recipes. I have a recipe book."

And the rampers' favorite flavor? "Milwaukee River has won two years in a row," Geary said.

Milwaukee River, he said, is purple, red and yellow Gatorade powder mixed together. "It comes out like a muddy-looking Milwaukee River."

Enough with the hydration, though. The Vegas flight just took off and it's time to turn one of the airline's new 737 Max aircraft that has just pulled up. 

It's headed to San Diego. The clock is running.