WORKING -- Pete Carmichael

-- Story by Alex Coolman

HE IS

The man on the ground

KNOWING WHEN TO STOP

When Alaska Airlines Flight 426, arriving from Seattle, touches down at

John Wayne Airport, Pete Carmichael is standing on the tarmac, a plastic,

florescent orange guidance wand in each hand.

The Boeing 737-700, its engines screaming, taxis slowly toward Gate 10,

and Carmichael waves the wands like a maestro conducting a particularly

deafening orchestra.

The wind from the engine blast blows his hair around. The smell of hot

rubber and engine fuel fills the air. Carmichael raises the wands

directly over his head and brings them slowly together.

He’s telling the pilot of the massive plane, who can’t see where his

front wheel is, when to stop.

That’s what Carmichael and his fellow employees at Airport Terminal

Services do. They stop big airplanes, 19 times a day.

HOLLERING ON THE TARMAC

That isn’t all they do, though. Airport Terminal Services is responsible

for providing a whole battery of services for Alaska and TWA. They load

and unload baggage. They clean the plane interiors. They operate the

pushback -- the vehicle that helps the planes move away from the

terminal.

At John Wayne Airport, Carmichael is in charge of everything ATS does.

“When I started in 1990, I was a regular ramp service employee,”

Carmichael says, hollering over the ambient noise on the tarmac. “I made

$5 an hour.”

Though he never finished college, Carmichael had a knack for working with

the planes. He advanced, and today his title is “station manager.” He has

more than 30 employees to oversee, profit and loss statements to worry

about, and people to train.

And when the planes come rolling in, he’s out there.

UNDER THE SIGN OF THE ESKIMO

As the Eskimo on the 737’s vertical stabilizer smiles benignly from

above, ATS employees scurry to minister to the plane. The average flight

is only in the gate between 32 and 36 minutes, and there’s a lot to do

during that time.

Carmichael, earplugs poking out of his ears and a high-visibility orange

safety vest flapping around on his chest, hooks the pushback up to the

airplane so it will be ready to depart, and plugs an external power cable

into an outlet on the Boeing’s nose.

Other employees are throwing luggage onto the belt loader and securing

the webbing that holds the cargo secure in the belly of the plane.

Carmichael says he never stops thinking about the importance of the job

he and his staff perform. Too much can go wrong if the weight in the

plane isn’t properly distributed.

“The first thing I think of,” when he hears about a plane accident, “is

where did that plane come from? Who loaded that airplane? Was it all done

properly?”

THE WINGWALKER

In no time at all, the plane is ready to head back out.

Carmichael takes the position of “wingwalker,” pacing along at the tip of

the right wing, as Alaska Airlines Flight 499, departing to Seattle, is

backed out to the runway.

He holds his guidance wands in an “L” shape. The plane executes a slow,

massive 90-degree turn.

It taxis away, lost in a shimmer of heat.

And Carmichael walks back to the terminal, a man hoping he’s just done

everything right.