The Airport Employee You Need to Thank When Your Plane Leaves on Time

20.03.2024 - 21:29 / afar.com / Airlines / Dulles

Airports might seem like frenetic, disorienting places, but there’s a lot of very precise orchestration taking place behind the scenes.

The logistics of getting dozens of big metal tubes in the air—with hundreds of people on board and the drinks and snacks to feed them—boggles the mind. Yet that feat takes place every day at airports around the world. It’s a team effort, but one person on the ground carries an extra burden: the airport station manager.

You may not notice them amid the rush, but they’re invaluable. Without them, operations on the ground would grind to a halt and you’d be facing a board full of delayed flights. Here’s a closer look at everything an airport manager does.

Almost every airline has one of these staffers at each of its airports, and they seemingly do it all. They oversee teams of employees; maintain facilities, including gate areas, lounges, or back offices; interact with thousands of customers; serve as an airline’s main representative at the airport; and crucially help ensure that your flight gets on its way as smoothly and as quickly as possible. They’re the boss on the ground for everything that has to do with an airline’s operations.

Depending upon the airport and airline, station managers’ jobs may differ greatly. A Delta station manager in Detroit (a Delta hub) may handle hundreds of flights a day while one in Charlotte (an American hub) may only have several dozen. However, they all share one goal: to make sure the flights in their care operate on time and safely.

Some station managers will spend more time behind the scenes, watching for irregular flight operations or delayed flights that will need new gate assignments—hopefully helping avoid those dreaded last-minute changes that have you dashing through the airport. Other station managers stay front and center, engaging with agents and customers on the concourse.

According to Vanna Oak, the former Washington Dulles station manager for Air France–KLM, there is no such thing as a typical day. As many as 800 people checked in, more or less simultaneously, for her afternoon flights to Amsterdam and Paris, and she spent much of her time assisting at the ticket counter and gates (which involves a lot of running around at an airport as large as Dulles).

Oak’s day would begin much earlier, however, in an office beneath the concourse where she often made regular calls to operation centers at the airlines’ hubs in Amsterdam and Paris to gather essential information for her flights, including important cargo or VIP passengers. (Washington, D.C., regularly welcomes diplomats and corporate bigwigs who receive private gate escorts.)

Oak’s budget would cover everything from crew hotels to airport signage and ground equipment.