Originally Posted by
CA1900
If they were genuinely interested in being more efficient at getting planes off the gate (and freeing the ops agents up!), they could start by eliminating 95% of the busy-work and paper pushing that the ops agents have to do. We have cellular-enabled iPads in every cockpit. The fact that they still aren't leveraging that connectivity for anything operational absolutely blows my mind. (My Hawaii weather packet the other day was so thick it had to be stapled in three separate stacks. I looked at exactly none of it.)
The ops agent would be obsolete if we went paperless. They could combine ops/csa, cut down on staffing, and be way more efficient if we were all electronic.
The agents could handle boarding/deplaning and customers and we could handle the airplane, and everything we need support-wise is automated.
PS. I wonder if part of the delay in going electronic has to do with basically making a significant group of SWA employees (ops agents) obsolete?