When I left American, cargo was the one of the biggest revenue sources for the company. It's liability cost ratio is very little compared to other sources of revenue. I am sure the closing of the cargo facility is a cost cutting measure due to the economy. Yet, it seems that directs business to other airlines who are willing to have fully trained staff on duty on Sunday...assuming that Southwest's employees are fully trained.
As a ticket agent I would accept cargo shipments and process them as part of the job since I worked at a small airport. Sometimes that meant passengers had to wait as it took about 15 minutes to process a box and I could do it in my sleep. The amount of paper work is silly and redundant. And that is a standard the DOT required. Every few weeks the DOT would change a standard and the creation of a new 8 x 11 had to be made, read, filled out and initialed. All while trying to check in passengers. I understand safety measures but when one has to print up a blank paper from the dot matrix printer and literally write the bag number (the number on the bag tag already on the box) with a fat marker in large print on 2 sides of each box and tape it, I felt like I was kindergarten.
Every few weeks my boss would tell me how I did it wrong since the new standard by the DOT was put in place but I was not given the memo in time. Very annoying.
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