Back in the late 90s when I was awaiting my college exam results and the outcome of my scholarship application, I didn’t want to sit on my ass like many of my friends were happy doing. I thought that I should get a permanent job just in case things didn’t work out the way I was praying they would. So I applied for a job as an entry-level check-in agent at the international airport.
What does a check-in agent do? Well, back in the day at least, we used to work shift hours, up to 7.5 hours per day. These could be 1am to 5am, 2am to 7am, 9am to 5pm, 6pm to midnight, and so forth, and allowing room for extra hours if the flights were delayed. Because it was a small airport, we were not required during some hours on certain days because there were no flights.
We had to learn codes for airports (such as PER for Perth, MRU for Mauritius) as well as codes for inputting into the system when allocating flights or seats to customers. We would check in passengers and their luggage, surf boards, wheelchairs, guitars and pets. We would make lost-and-found queries for luggages or misplaced children and great-grandparents!
There was always that 5-10 per cent of passengers who would ruin the almost perfect shift. Some examples of behaviours included:
- Passengers who rocked up late and wanted to be let on the plane, even after the flight had closed. Some tourists claimed the traffic was blocked, or that the weather was bad, without knowing that airport staff are ones of the first to receive traffic and weather updates.
- Passengers who came late with heavy bags for the hold (plane’s belly) thinking that we would give them free extra allowance because they knew that when closing a flight there’s a possibility that we would have leftover allowance if the flight was not full. So they expected us to give them the kilos originally reserved for the unsold seats. Do not try this trick today!
- Those who claimed their uncles had just died and they needed to be let on the flight to attend the funeral and that the ticket agent told them it’s fine to rock up right on time. When we looked at the dates on the tickets, they had been purchased weeks before.
- Passengers who would scream in your face because the flight was delayed due to weather conditions beyond anyone’s control. Then when it was time to fly they would come crawling with apologies, blaming the weather for making them cranky.
- Ladies who misplaced their makeup bags or other expensive items, blamed hostesses for stealing them then their husbands rang from overseas saying “honey, you left it in the bathroom/car/at your mum’s.” Not one word of apology but they did let us know they found their bags.
- Drunks. Oh drunks who claimed they were not drunk but were only having a hangover.
Once the flight closed – which meant no one else, not even the President, was allowed to check in – then 2-4 of us would go to the boarding gate to check passports and boarding passes as people walked through to the plane. Because of the design of the airport requiring passengers to walk to the plane on the runway, another 2-4 staff would go to the bottom of the steps on the runway to double check that the people attempting to board the plane did have boarding passes.
Depending on their seat allocation, if anyone had children or were in a wheelchair, then we would let them on first or last to avoid bumping into others or blocking the aisle. We also dealt with other stuff after the flights have left, like tallying the tickets to double-check that they matched the printout from the computer, plus other paperwork to ensure we’ve covered our asses.
A bonus of having such job was getting discounted and free tickets to the destinations where the national airline flew to. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t work there long enough to use the allowance, because I got my scholarship to come to Perth! Thank fucking God!
Anyway, just so you understood why I was happy to go… you know the kind of behavior from passengers you see on the fly-on-the-wall type of series on TV such as Airport, (in the UK) Jetstar’s Going Places and Beyond their Control? Where travellers get nasty or frustrated and think that they are God just because they paid for their flights? You know the staff who copped the abuse? I used to be one of those staff!
Wheels up!
Ever done a job and was damn happy to leave?
