News
Air Serv Staff Weathers December Storms
Thousands of passengers stranded. Employees unable to make it into work. Freezing temperatures and inches of ice and snow. Could conditions be any worse for an airport? Oh yes, it could be three days before Christmas.
That's the situation that Air Serv staff faced in both Cincinnati and Memphis on December 22, 2004. Bad weather can be a challenge to the staff of any airport, with ice-covered roads being one of the most difficult. But thanks to the effort of Air Serv employees, operations continued. With advance planning, managers and staff working overtime and plenty of hard work and dedication, both cities were able to successfully weather the storm.
Cincinnati
Cincinnati got over a foot of snow in one day on Wednesday, December 22. More than 10,000 passengers were stranded at the airport when their flights were cancelled. It is doubtful that they were in a holiday mood.
The interstate was shut down and many airline and Air Serv employees had difficulty making it into
work. It was time to get a ride from Regional Manager Paul DeBellevue, who jumped in his four-wheel drive vehicle and picked up employees at their homes to take them to work. Air Serv then got hotel rooms for the employees so they wouldn't have to worry about making it home.
Most of the restaurants at the airport ran out of food half way through the storm, so Air Serv bought lots of soup to feed the staff while they worked.
Four employees walked 15 blocks in the snow to catch a bus to take them to work and didn't miss a single day.
But even with those extraordinary efforts, only 5% of the staff was able to make it in to work. So all of the management and supervisory staff stayed at the airport for three days straight . No cushy beds or dreaming of sugar plums for them - they caught short naps at their desks before heading back out to help in the operation. They worked long hours for their customer, Delta Air Lines, transporting passengers between terminals as their flights were rescheduled, responding to wheelchair requests and distributing pillow, cots and blankets to stranded passengers.
Air Serv provides Delta with many services, including wheelchair, skycap, cabin cleaning, cargo/mail handling, employee shuttle and ticket verification.
"We are blessed to have such a strong and dedicated staff here in Cincinnati," said DeBellevue. "Everyone went above and beyond the call of duty. It was a total group effort."
Mike Ostendorf, General Manager for the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, agreed. "There are a lot of unsung heroes that took care of passengers needs that were outside their scope of work, but they did it because it was the right thing to do," he said.
According to Ostendorf, one man from Vancouver was particularly grateful to Air Serv because his 88-year-old mother was stranded at the airport, which of course caused her family to worry about her. "Our employees took this lady to our office and set up a cot to allow her to sleep. We kept in constant contact with her son by phone to let him know that his mother was fine and when she would be able to catch her flight out."
Memphis
It was three to four inches of freezing rain and sleet that struck Memphis that same day, which quickly froze and remained on the streets for days, as the temperature never rose above 30 degrees.
According to Program Manager Tim McLaughlin, they had been warned about some bad weather coming their way, but weren't expecting anything that heavy. " This was very unusual for this part of the country, especially as hard as we got hit," he said. "But we did plan for this and we worked our plan well."
It was the worst time of the year for their customer, FedEx, which was dealing with the large holiday volume. Air Serv provides employee bus transportation for FedEx's employees and their flight crews in their headquarters city. "With the bad weather throughout the Midwest as well as the Eastern United States, many of the FedEx jets were delayed getting into Memphis to sort their packages," said Tim. "We had to drastically adapt to their continuously changing needs. We did this for three straight days without a glitch."
This was in spite of the fact that many of Air Serv's employees couldn't make it into work because of
the icy streets. Air Serv set up an employee shuttle to pick them up at home and return them safely at the end of their shifts.
Being prepared paid off for Air Serv. Tim received this e-mail from Ray Jancso, Manager Flight Coordination & Transportation of FedEx.
Tim,
Please accept my most sincere thanks for the exceptional support Air Serv provided us over the past three days. The ice "event" on Wednesday, December 22nd severely disrupted our operation and we, as a Crew Bus department, were faced with constantly changing demands for service. Much of that service was conducted in hazardous weather and road/ramp conditions, not to mention the same needing to be traversed by everyone while traveling to report to work. Without hesitation, Air Serv stepped up to the plate to meet the multiple requests I made for the extension of hours of numerous personnel working various shifts. As far as I know, not one single accident/incident was encountered through all of the turmoil.
I truly hope Air Serv provides special recognition for both the employees who volunteered to work extra, sometimes lengthy, hours and the supervisors and dispatchers who coordinated the coverage. Of particular note, Willie McGee [Crew Bus Supervisor] was my main point of contact and did not blink an eye when I briefed him on the ever-changing plan for the given day. He was most professional and dedicated to coordinating with me and the other Air Serv shift supervisors and staff. Without everyone's assistance, which included sacrifice away from their families during this holiday time, we would have failed to keep up with the demands of the operation.
Tim immediately responded to Ray's glowing letter:
Thank you for your kind words and I will most certainly be recognizing our top performers from last week, it certainly was a week to remember. The two biggest challenges were the terrible driving conditions in and around the ramp, and as you said, we did it without incident. The second biggest challenge was assuring that we had the staffing to provide you with the service you needed.
As you can imagine, many people that are from this area are quite uncomfortable driving on the interstates or main roads altogether when the weather gets bad. Knowing that this "weather" was coming we put together a thorough "seek and assist" plan and worked it rather well. If we had any driver who called and could not make it into work because of the bad weather we sent out our sprinter vans to provide them transportation to and from work. We also had hotel rooms on stand by if anybody needed them.
It was a total team effort, all shifts, by both parties - Air Serv and FedEx.
Thank you again.
Tim
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