Ground Control

摘要

In a small cubicle at SkyWest Airlines headquarters in St. George, Utah, flight operations dispatcher Randy Parker stares at his computer screen. At his fingertips are the routes that more than 1,500 SkyWest flights will take today to 130-plus U.S. cities. A strong weather front is coming in, so Parker is reworking some of the routes to bypass it. If Parker's PC should time out right now, any of those flights could be delayed, or worse. At that same moment in another part of the building, Russell "Chip" Childs, SkyWest's vice president- controller, is running some numbers on the regional airline's $1.2 billion business. As he does every day, Childs is looking for ways to make SkyWest more cost-efficient while maintaining or improving the airline's on-time performance. In a volatile market, he knows those two metrics are key to SkyWest's success—the airline has doubled its revenue and employee base over the past four years while watching competitors fold.