AMERICANWAY

GEARHEAD A AT 4 A.M., American's cargo warehouse at Chicago O'Hare International Airport reminds me a little of the building at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. A pass code and fingerprint are needed to open the metal gate. Long rows of crates are stacked under parallel strips of white lights. You just know there's a story behind every box, inside every container, stacked on every pallet. There's little action so far this Monday morn- ing, Oct. 20, but there's always someone doing something at all hours here. In one corner, Fleet Service Clerks (FSCs) Robert Winchester and Miller Sherley are discussing strategy on how to stack cargo on a pallet to best preserve balance. A mixed pile of wooden and cardboard boxes is a game of Tetris to them. "I look at it and first see shapes," says Winchester, who's worked the job for more than 30 years. This is the buildup. After the buildup is done and the cargo is secure in plastic and netting, the FSCs will weigh the cargo and send the information to the airline's Integrated Opera- tions Center in Fort Worth, Texas (detailed in the October 2014 "Gearhead"). There, weight- and-balance specialists will create the plans that their ramp counterparts will use to carefully load the cargo holds of airplanes. Most people only think about an airline's passenger service. That's what the TV ads and billboards focus on. But it's not only people flying around the world on our fleet. Mail, raw materials, shelf-ready goods and industrial parts all travel across our global network in a shadow operation that exists just out of eyesight of passengers. "Just remember that on most flights, valuable cargo is down below," says Jim Butler, president of Cargo at American. Of course, every workplace has its own lingo. "Runners" ferry cargo and mail between the warehouse and the aircraft. Containers or flat metal pallets that hold cargo on wide- body aircraft are "Unit Load Devices" or ULDs. "Breaking down" cargo means unwrapping and unpacking shipments from ULDs when they arrive. The warehouse has some specialized gear to go along with the slang. It always pays to look down when walking around the warehouse: There are rollerbeds (smooth metal spheres built into a mat to ease the movement of heavy loads) strategically located near the warehouse doors. Walking on these is as fun as it sounds. There are also yellow poles standing sentinel by the bay doors leading to the airport grounds. This is a laser trip-wire system that alerts staff that the cargo being moved is taller than 64 inches — too big to fit onboard. So when you're flailing across the metal balls, trying to keep your balance, there's a good chance you'll trig- ger an alarm as well. (That's how it worked for me, anyway.) By 4:45 a.m., the cargo operation is in full swing in Chicago. The cargo-bay doors are open, and drivers are unloading every- thing imaginable: furniture stuffing, metallic parts of an industrial-sized chemistry set, boxes of tropical fish. Well-oiled forklifts pirouette around the warehouse, hauling the goods to be scanned by security, and are then off for buildup. On the breakdown side, plastic is stripped and bundled for recycling. O'Hare is waking up, and the first airplanes are ready to depart at 5 a.m. The first pieces of cargo, boxes of computer parts from Japan, are put on a B737 destined for MIA. This routine piece of delivery actually marks a milestone for the airline: It's one of the first pieces being sent as an integrated business. Like everything in this airline, the Cargo team has combined the US Airways and American Airlines cargo busi- nesses into one seamless entity, the first part of our business to integrate since the merger of our two carriers last year. Before today, Cargo teams were running separate businesses within the same city. As of today, every shipment is booked, tracked, tendered and received from drop-off to pick-up on an AWB with a single 001 prefix. Wait, you don't know what AWB means? That's an Air Waybill, the combination of a ticket and a contract made with a customer. If you knew that, you must be one of the few initiated into the profitable and professional world of cargo. The World According to Cargo While you sit onboard an airliner, there's A SHADOW AIRLINE RUNNING RIGHT UNDER YOUR FEET. J O E PA P PA L A R D O Senior Manager, Internal Communications American Airlines 1 2 D EC E M B E R 2 01 4 A A .CO M/A M E R I C A NWAY

• Cover