this building is
it's almost living and breathing every
day american airlines loads up 715
000 pounds of cargo onto planes and
dallas fort worth is home to the
airline's largest cargo operation
live animals food ppe and legos end up
on flights headed as far as shanghai
or frankfurt but getting the right cargo
on the right plane
in time for takeoff is no easy task it
takes a team of 220 people
to haul and fit thousands of pounds of
freight into planes it's 100 miles an
hour there's no
ramp up immediately you're drinking from
a fire hose
that's mark he took us inside american's
171 thousand square foot cargo facility
to see how crews keep cargo flying even
as kobe 19
halts air traffic around the globe
to keep moving freight american airlines
launched cargo only routes for the first
time in 36 years
in 2020 the airline sent out 5 000 cargo
only flights
across 39 new routes the massive cargo
facility in dallas
is located here at the airport it's
broken down into inbound cargo here
and outbound cargo here this is where
the magic happens
the outbound center handles shipments
from trucks that will then be loaded
onto planes
some trucks come from as far as
guadalajara and mexico city
this is the drop-off dock back in the
back and so that's where the shipments
will come in
goods are unloaded and go right into the
tracking system
that way the load planters can see how
much freight you're planning for a
departure
there's an army of forklifts and we'll
try to keep you safe
while you're here a lot of ppe personal
protective equipment lately
ventilators latex gloves candy laffy
taffy but this is from sao paulo brazil
just like passengers and their bags go
through airport security
so does cargo they come over here and
they go through screening
every piece of cargo gets screened
workers are looking for anything that
doesn't belong
once everything is screened the goods
are moved to their designated locations
in the warehouse
even animals in 2019
american moved 40 000 it's not unusual
to see
100 live animals a day we have one
that's
waiting anxiously for his owner to pick
him up little joey
fruits veggies herbs and flowers head
over to one of these three fridges this
is our perishable store
most of our fresh fruits and vegetables
come from mexico or central america
sometimes from south america next week
we have about 20
000 pounds of blackberries going to
london
this area is for human remains we take
care of our veterans when they're fallen
soldiers
that are very meaningful that we do ship
and finally
any oversized cargo heads to this
section
a few hours before departure time the
cargo is tugged to a build station
so here we're seeing that they're
building up freight for one of our
outbound departures
onto a pmc workers build up cargo on
these aluminum pallets called pmcs
using the expertise that he's developed
over time he's looking at each shipment
and deciding what's the most efficient
way that i can build this
but they can't build the freight any
taller than 65 inches
so it can still fit through the airplane
door you never know if it's going to be
raining in london when you get there so
we protect everything from the elements
by wrapping it in plastic
so they'll have plastic on the bottom
they'll put plastic over the top
wrap those two together and then put the
cargo net over it to restrain everything
if it's food flowers or herbs they're
loaded into temperature controlled
containers
they have batteries that maintain the
temperature inside the unit it's like
shipping a refrigerator
these bundles of cargo once built are
called unit load devices
or ulds each uld goes to be weighed
a single container can't be over 3 500
pounds but the pallets can hold
even more weight while it depends on
weather route and if passengers are on
board
a boeing triple 7 300 can carry up to
125
000 pounds of cargo anymore and the
plane could struggle to take off
so it takes a lot of knowledge of the
weight and dimensions of every plane to
get this right
a lot of expertise in the building many
of these guys have 40 years or more
finally the ulds are loaded onto tugs
and driven out to the plane
so this is what we call the backyard
this is where we stage
wide-body cargo that's ready to go to
the aircraft and so
all of these lanes have a letter and our
system we can see what lane they're in
so that the drivers know what to go
getting and what to take to the aircraft
this is the london departure that we
were watching them build the freight for
earlier today
it's all right there about to be loaded
on this boeing 787
workers have three doors they can load
cargo through the front and aft or back
doors
are the biggest the cargo is brought up
to the height of the plane using a lift
the lift and the plane have rollers on
the floor to easily move the heavy load
from a control panel
this is the hard part it's like a game
of tetris trying to figure out what
combinations of containers and pallets
will fit snugly
but a plan helps teams figure out where
each uld should go
to best use the space and balance out
the weight on the plane
after everything's in the right place
there's floor locks that come up and
they keep the cargo from shifting
through the smaller door in the back
which we call the aft bulk workers load
any bulk cargo
that's anything that's not built into a
container or onto a pallet
that's typically where we're gonna put
live animals or
really anything that is connecting to
this flight
and all this has to happen quickly
consumers expectations as far as
delivery times continue to increase
right we want our goods faster
on average workers have about an hour to
load and lock
all the ulds and any freeloaded cargo
before the plane takes off
and this whole process happens in
reverse for incoming planes carrying
cargo
it breaks off the aircraft our runner
will come and pick it up and take it
back to our cargo facility
from there it goes through our breakdown
process where we take it all off of
the pmcs and separate it based on airway
bill number
and then from there we stage it in one
of those locations that we saw earlier
so that whenever the customer arrives we
can load it on their vehicle
and we have four hours from the econ the
aircraft walks in
until it's got to be ready for the
customers to pick up
in 2019 american airlines cargo moved
122 million pounds of freight every day
but coronavirus made it harder in 2020
the airline averaged only 101 million
pounds daily
when passenger volume dropped 75 in
april the airline cut passenger routes
that usually carry cargo
fewer routes also meant fewer direct
flights
that led to a lot more cargo connecting
through dallas it might have originated
in
asia or europe you know and is passing
on to latin america
and that introduces a lot of additional
complexity you have to physically handle
the freight a lot more often
but cargo still needs to be moved even
if the world has stopped traveling
we live in a globalized world where not
every country produces everything they
need from cell phones to laptops to
clothes to food
relies on air cargo transportation but
even with the introduction of cargo only
flights
the airline has still lost billions it's
a drop in the ocean but in no way does
the
the additional cargo revenue that we're
generating offset the 75
drop in passenger revenues that we've
been seeing this year no big surprise
we're gonna post losses next year
so until passenger traffic returns to
normal american plans to continue
flying and packing these cargo only
flights
the goal obviously ultimately hopefully
quickly is for those aircraft to return
to passenger service
probably a theme going into next year
will be that everything's fluid
and we have to remain flexible