PIT

United Airlines Employees Go to School for Pit Crews To Boost Teamwork, Speed

By Susan Carey
The Wall Street Journal
March 24, 2006; Page B1

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Denise Rivera spends her workdays waving in jets, unloading
baggage and pushing planes around with a tractor. But on this day, the lead ramp
servicewoman for United Airlines at Miami International Airport was struggling to remove
five lug nuts from a Chevrolet Monte Carlo stock car.

“It needed lubrication or something,” she said later. “I kept winging it and finally got it
down.”

Ms. Rivera was one of 33 United ramp workers who donned coveralls, knee pads, ear plugs
and safety goggles at Pit Instruction & Training LLC one recent afternoon to learn how to
handle a jack, change 65-pound tires and fill fuel tanks on race cars.

They aren’t about to turn airport runways into race tracks. But UAL Corp.’s United hopes
some training in the split-second practices of Nascar pit crews will help Ms. Rivera and her
colleagues slash the time that United’s 455 jetliners spend on the ground. Less time on the
ground equals more time aloft. That means more daily flights without having to buy new
planes and — the airline hopes — more revenue.

The pit-crew experience is intended to reinforce the importance of such things
as teamwork, preparedness and safety. It’s one small but important way United is trying to
become more efficient after emerging from three years of bankruptcy-court protection last
month.

“We’re back to basics,” says Joni Teragawachi, United’s manager of world-wide airport
operations training. The Federal Aviation Administration “has had issues with us” because
inspectors could find United workers doing things differently at different airports, she says.
“In our history, training has been optional.”

By immersing its supervisory “lead” ramp workers in the adrenalin-pumping realm of
NASCAR, the airline hopes to cut the average aircraft ground time by eight minutes to 53
minutes, competitive with United’s peers. For the airline’s leisure-oriented “Ted” flights, the
goal is to cut ground time by five minutes to 36.

United plans to put nearly 1,200 of these employees through “Pit Crew U” this year and
hopes to bring customer-service agents to similar classes in 2007. About 18 months ago at
its Denver hub, the airline started a campaign to standardize ramp functions to determine
the most efficient and consistent way to safely “turn” a plane — bring it in, unload and load
it, and push it out again.

Building on that, it set schedules for shorter ground times at the San Francisco hub and on
most Ted flights this year. Soon, the new regime will make its way to Chicago and
Washington.

The exercise is meant to reinforce principles of orderliness, communication and standardized
tasks on the ramp, using examples from pit-crew work. The high-energy sessions are also
meant as a morale-builder for a group that has been short-changed on training over the
years and just endured a brutal bankruptcy that cut their wages, laid off some of their
colleagues and forced them to do more with less.

Pit Instruction & Training opened a campus in Mooresville, 30 miles north of Charlotte, in
2004 complete with a quarter-mile race track and a “pit road” with positions for six cars.
The school offers an eight-week program to train novices to work the pits. But most of its
business comes from corporate team building, centered on the highly choreographed
preparation, practice and teamwork of pit crews. United said the training is part of a
multimillion dollar investment that includes new equipment and bag scanners for the ramp.

When United approached him last year, co-owner Tom DeLoach wasn’t sure what the airline
could accomplish. But on a flight soon after, he found himself gazing out the window at
ramp workers going through their tarmac ballet. “It’s simple, but the execution is a pain,”
he says. “I thought [United] was quite creative to make a connection between what an
airplane does and what we do.”

Pit crews normally are composed of seven people who “jump over the wall” into the “pit
box,” where a car comes screeching in during a race. One handles the jack, two heft air
guns, two haul fresh tires, one adds gasoline and a “catch-can man” sops up excess fuel.
The team keeps working as the car roars away, cleaning up the pit box, moving equipment
into position and preparing for the next stop.

United ramp workers usually work in teams of four. Their tools are belt-loaders and baggage
carts, scanners that keep track of suitcases, and tow bars and push tractors that move
planes. But the workers starting their shifts don’t always find a tidy workplace with
equipment at the ready. Things break down. Weather gets lousy. People call in sick, leaving
teams understaffed. These variables mean it’s important for everybody to have the standard
moves down cold.

One recent morning, the United workers assembled in a classroom at Pit Crew U. Leading
the discussion were instructors Patrick Bernall, a professional “jackman” who works on Kyle
Petty’s No. 45 Petty Enterprise Dodge, and John Perfetti, a United lead ramp serviceman at
Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

“A good, 36-minute Ted turn is our 13-second pit stop,” said Mr. Bernall, a Bruce Willis lookalike.
“Your envelope is our pit box,” he added, using airline lingo for an aircraft parking
place. “It would be silly for you to line up on your envelope without your belt loader,” he
said. He stressed the common concepts both groups need to follow: safety, teamwork,
communications and standardized tasks.

Heads nodded as he explained the equipment, worker positions and planning that go into a
pit stop, using power-point slides and video from actual races. “They’re so organized,”
marveled Pat Drayton, a lead ramp servicewoman at Dulles. “The equipment is there.
They’re ready to go.”

The workers then went outside to “Pit Road,” where two race cars plastered with United
stickers made a few quick laps around the track. The employees were divided into six
teams. They climbed into uniforms, did a few calisthenics and launched into a series of pitstop
exercises captured by overhead video cameras.

Mr. Bernall stood on the wall, barking instructions into a microphone.

He offered no coaching before the first exercise. A member of one team tripped over his air
gun cord and fell down. Someone lost his safety goggles. Tires rolled this way and that. Lug
nut removal was measured in minutes instead of seconds.

At the start of the second change, Mr. Bernall stopped the teams. “What’s wrong?” he
shouted. “FOD!” To airline workers, that means “foreign object debris” that they’re
supposed to remove from the tarmac so it doesn’t get sucked into a jet engine or disable
machinery. Lug nuts had been sprinkled intentionally in the pit boxes to see if the United
workers would notice and clean them up. Every team flunked that test.

Another time, Mr. Bernall removed some workers from the teams, leaving just three to
perform all the pit functions. “That was absolutely the most meaningful exercise,” said a
sweaty Brad Fox, a ramp lead at Dulles. “Dulles is understaffed.”

But having extra people didn’t help, either. When Mr. Bernall added people to Howard
Fulton’s team, “it was so confusing we kinda goofed up,” said the ramp lead at Chicago’s
O’Hare Airport. “We all went on one side of the car. We were bumping into each other.”

Gradually, the strangers on each team started working smarter. By the last of six pit
changes, five teams had improved their times. Ms. Drayton’s squad finished its last change
in 49 seconds, slicing 59% off its initial score of 119 seconds. She said, “I told the guys,
‘You’re better with the tools. You’re stronger. I’ll take over on the jack.’ They didn’t argue.”
Some of the more cynical United employees said they didn’t think the program would save
the airline. But the sessions did raise spirits and heart rates. Ms. Rivera’s team gamely
improved its time through the exercises, winding up with the lowest final score, 35 seconds,
of all six teams.

A little cheerleading helped, she said. At first, “my group was moping. I said, ‘No, no, no.
We’re gonna get better.’ By the end, they were all yelling along with me.”