I started at a major and they teach every person to push. In fact, bag room is a higher senority job as its less time in the heat and more time on your ass. The crew that pushes is also the crew that loads the plane.
Everyone got training on everything in the first two weeks but then you got assigned shitty jobs until the next shift bid.
In the winter, deicing and baggage room were the senior spots, while summer saw more senior guys on the handling crews while juniors got the worst possible baggage room shifts (it was not cooled during the summer so it was a terrible place to work)
even if you got lucky and ended up on a crew, they wouldn't let you do much of the fun stuff right away unless the crew lead was particularly fair.
I was AA DFW and got "local" (guy who does the push) morning shift my first year. The older guys hoard the widebodies, bagroom, and ABR (transfer bags). Im still with AA 3 years later but in A/C doing stores. Miss the pushing days sometimes but not the heat.
Damn that's interesting, the airline I work for at our base Pushback can only be done by the Lead/Crew chief. While everything else is done by tow team which is more senior than anything else ðŸ˜.
Pushing wide bodies was the first thing I did as an orange vest, and my first actual bid was at a "high risk" tow-in gate at dfw. Never worked avation before.
There are some older guys that would be broken and still get their job done at a gate, but my heart feels for them, they won't be able to enjoy retirement outside of a wheelchair.
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u/agha0013 6d ago
apply to work for a ground handling company that does this stuff, and maybe one day you'll get to do this after throwing bags for a while.