The Department, My Office, My Job

My Job and the Office I Work

I should probably tell you a little about what I do.

I am an Air Services Rep in ATO. ATO stands for Antarctic Terminal Operations. It blankets:

My box for my belongings at my desk. Since we share our desks, we put our stuff away so as not to clutter the desk for the next person.

Cargo: Freight, baggage and supplies on, off and within the continent

 Science Cargo: Specializes in delicate handling and deliveries of scientist’s data, experiments and specimens.

Shuttles: Taxi service around town, transportation of personnel and air crew to and from the air fields, pick up and drop-off service for bag drags.

Loadplanner Molly: She calls me Tricianopa because when we were introduces, she thought I said my name was PAtricia. I corrected her by saying it's "Tricia -no PA"

Loadplanners: Cargo and freight designers. They piece together all types of freight (baggage, fuel, freshies, food, supplies, and equipment, hazardous, and mail) on pallets so that they fit on the different air transports under stringent guidelines depending on the where, on what and how the plane will be flying.

Cargo Loaders: Build the different pallets the loadplanners request. It’s Tetris on steroids. The loadplanners tell them what and they put it together. They also load  and unload all the planes from everywhere.

Field Camp Planners: They supervise what is needed in remote camps and schedules supplies and people to get there.

Making the flight board for the next day's flights. Flight#, Tail #, Route, Departure times, Arrival Times, # of Crew, Passengers (PAX) in and out, Transport time Pax to plane.

Air Services: Schedules air transportation for personnel on, off and within the continent. Coordinates for shuttles who to pick up when and sends out aircraft movement notices, manifests, and other important communications involving pax and aircraft, controls the flight board of arrivals and departures electronically and white board and updates all information as it changes. Essentially maintaining accurate files for every flight with every passenger and all cargo electronically and a paper trail folder.

I love my job and the people I work with. They are a tight knit group who like to have fun. I feel blessed to be a part of it.



Christen at our desk. I'm at the other computer. Jamie and I share the right, while Talia and Christen share the left- on opposite shifts.



Day 12 - October 22 '11

Day 12- October 22 ‘11

Tonight is the ATO (Antarctic Terminal Operations) BBQ party in the cargo bay. It’s a meet and greet for everyone in the unit. Every unit in town is having one tonight.

Spring and Tricia

Spring the shuttle driver brought her roommate, who coincidentally was Tricia M. I hadn’t seen her much since we got to the Ice, so it was nice catching up with her.

The 2 Tricia's

Cassa trying to force feed Sully a drunk inducing Carl Bourbon Cherry

The food was delicious. Excellent cheese (fancy type) and crackers and salads along with Carl’s bourbon soaked chocolate covered cherries. One cherry and you felt like you could be instantly drunk, they were so strong. All the meat was seasoned and grilled to perfection. There were 2 huge watering trough tubs filled with snow (and volcanic dirt). One filled with cans and bottles of beer and wine and the other pop.

Craig trying to cut in on Kevin and Tricia

The ambience and decorating of the cargo bay, gave the feel of low budget wedding receptions in fire halls or VFWs. Or school dances and proms in Smalltown USA, like in the movie “Footloose”. 80’s music was jamming. Some people started to dance and it was like an awkward Jr High first dance, which Tricia and Kevin reenacted by dancing stiff and 3 feet apart like teenagers who’d never danced before. It was too funny.

Kevin and Tricia

Queen and Burke

Tricia trying to mess up me capturing the essence of the ambience

Luke

Kevin and Christen

Jamie

Burke is from Seward AK and I coincidentally worked with his Dad Brandon Anderson at Point Thomson.

Danny and Kelly

Today was the first day Jerry and I started having phone issues. We think it had to do with the phone cards we got at RadioShack. Whenever I called the house, I got a busy signal or his cell phone went right to message, but on his end it rang and when he answered it, all he heard was a dial tone. It was so frustrating.

So we Google chatted. This will go on for 3 days before I decide the phone cards are useless and I purchase a virtual phone card from pingo.com that will take another few days to activate. At least there are other ways to communicate thankfully.