AMERICANWAY

Inside the Brain of an Airline The cornerstone of American Airlines: its INTEGRATED OPERATIONS CENTER THERE’S A STEADY hum of activity as I stand at the top of a stairway at the American Airlines Integrated Operations Center (IOC) in Fort Worth, Texas. The 36,000-square-foot room is filled with desks in an open-air design, housing nearly 300 aviation experts of varying fields: flight dispatching, cargo balancing, routing, weather forecasting, aircraft maintenance and flight-crew monitoring. From this cavernous room (along with a similarly sized Operations Control Center — OCC — in Pittsburgh), the largest airline in the world coordinates its global operations. Scott Ramsay, managing director of IOC and Dispatch Operations, looks out at the employees with satisfaction, eyeing the absence of activity on the phones. He can tell who’s on a call by looking at lighted rods that extend over each desk, glowing red and green when there are calls being made and taken. “When they have a few minutes to sit across from each other talking, I like it,” Ramsay says, peering at the staff below. “That means we’re having a good day.” Airplanes are glamorous, powerful, dramatic and bold. Nothing in the IOC matches that description. To the people here, a good day is one when nothing exciting or out of place happens. There’s plenty to do without an emergency. There’s not much glory in running calculations that determine if onboard cargo will throw the airplane’s center of gravity off-kilter, yet that is a key metric for safety. There’s not a medal for someone who determines that a straight path from takeoff to landing will run across a stiff headwind, causing the aircraft to use more fuel. Yet, that choice can save millions of dollars and keep flights moving on time. There’s not a Pulitzer for accurate weather reporting. There are cool airplane-tracking systems that show all the flights American operates, and there are nifty displays of color-coded screens for the pros to examine. There are numerous automation tools to help the teams with their decisions and calculations, but when it comes to communications, there is still a lot that takes place on the telephones and via air-to-ground radio. “We have white noise pumped in here to help with the day-to-day operations,” Ramsay explains. “But on the really busy days, even with the white noise there is lots of activity, and it more closely represents the volume of the New York Stock Exchange than your local library.” The secret of the IOC and the OCC is the people. There are thousands of years of aviation experience represented here, on hand to help in a pinch or to plot the best way out of a rippling, shifting scheduling nightmare. These backroom players set the condition of the game, one we play every time we fly. We might thank a pilot when we deplane, but no one ever really thinks about appreciation for the routing teams, equipment coordinators, flight dispatchers, maintenance technicians and crew schedulers who make it happen. People are the real resource here, so that’s one reason why the airline is building a new IOC here in Texas, this one housing 1,400 employees. They don’t need to be thanked, though. They want what we want: good weather and an on-time departure. JOE PAPPALARDO Senior Manager, Internal Communications American Airlines

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