Some six hundred miles west, the three members of a flight crew suddenly become quiet and slightly tense as the aircraft goes into its final descent through stormy clouds. The safe landing depends on how well each does her or his job. These employees are well aware of their importance to the company. Right now they are the airline.
Meanwhile, down below and just outside the terminal building the mechanic, hastily summoned to replace a leaking pneumatic tube, expertly fits the new connector in place, only too aware that the flight's on-time departure depends on how quickly he can complete the job. He feels his responsibility and importance at such a time. To him his jot the repair and servicing of an airplane-is the airline.
A reservation clerk downtown is sitting with her headset clamped to her head, her eyes watching the panel in front of her. The instant the red light appears she touches a switch and is connected with a customer who wants to book a seat to Phoenix the next morning. This clerk's working world is the panel with its red light and the small console that looks like a typewriter keyboard and enables her to "talk" with the reservations computer located six hundred miles away. To her these things the panel and the console are the airline.
Jeff Rogers, the head porter at Denver, pushes his aluminum luggage carrier into the terminal with two passengers following close behind. He leads them to an empty space at the busy ticket counter where a clerk examines their tickets as Jeff unloads their bags. To Jeff, his luggage rack, the area where cars and taxis stop to discharge the passengers, the traffic of passengers and timing of arrivals and departures, and the lobby of the terminal are the airline.
To the traveling public, on the other hand, the airline is first the reservation clerk who books the flight, then the porter who helps them with luggage, the airport lounge where the tickets are collected, next the cabin of the airplane, and at their destination the baggage pickup room-all of these impressions making up a composite picture of the airline.
When you accept employment and go to work, you too will have a unique conception of what the airline is. Now you will share the thrill of being intimately involved in an exciting business, one of the most dynamic in the country. As you read ahead, imagine yourself working in each of the departments and see which appeals to you-taking into consideration your interests, education, special skills, and goals.
In this chapter we will take a quick walk through the general office of an airline. That name is appropriate because the departments that comprise the general office are specialist groups. They serve the entire company rather than carry out a single function. Some general office departments are rather small compared to the finance, sales, operations, flight, and maintenance departments, which are directly involved in the day-to-day operation of the company.
In the general office there are fewer job opportunities than elsewhere, and most of them are filled by specialists. Nevertheless there are interesting and well-paid openings for those who have the necessary back-ground and training. There are also positions for clerical personnel including secretaries, stenographers, clerks, and typists.
THE WORLD AVIATION DIRECTORY
If you look through the latest issue of the World Aviation Directory, which lists all the principal officers and departmental directors of every airline, you will discover that no two companies have identical organizations. In one airline the public relations department may report to the president; in another it may be under the vice-president of sales. The flight department in Company A may be one responsibility of the operations vice-president, and in Company B it may have its own vice president. Therefore in this book we shall not follow a single actual airline organization, but we will show how departments are usually organized and where they generally fit into the overall structure of a company. How a particular airline is organized, and just where each department reports, is of little interest until that company is your own company. What is important at this point is to see what each department does and how these activities affect job opportunities. In this chapter a tour of the general office of an airline will suggest the many departmental activities usually found in the headquarters of a major company.
TOP MANAGEMENT
As we get off the elevator on the thirty-second floor of a Chicago office building, the receptionist greets us and announces our arrival to Sheila Barrett, attorney-at-law and assistant corporate secretary, who has been asked to escort us through the four floors of the general offices.
We enter a wide corridor that has five doors on one side and a pair of double doors at the far end. Secretaries are working at desks placed at right angles to the wall beside each of the doors along the hallway. The corridor is quiet and formally decorated.
'These are the offices of the vice-presidents" Ms. Barrett tells us, "and the last one is the president's office. The other doors at the end of the corridor open into the board of directors' room. I'll admit that these posts are rather distant goals for new employees," our guide observed, "but they are not unattainable. After all, someone has to fill the position of each vice-president and even of the president!"
Her supervising officer, the vice-president and corporate secretary, occupies the office next to the president. The corporate affairs department consists of the vice-president and corporate secretary, Ms. Barrett, and a number of other employees.
