BALTIMORE
WASHINGTON AIRPORT -- Its the start of another day of filming for
the Southwest Airlines reality-TV show Airline, and the film crew
here is hoping things go terribly wrong.
Hopes are high
because they have just heard weather advisories for airports in the
Northeast, many of which are used by Southwest for flights to and
from BWI, increasing the prospect of delays and angry
travelers.
Its going to be a
good night, sound recorder Nicole Phillips Naylor predicts at 2:30
p.m. as the crew starts a March 11 workday that will end about
eight hours later.
Airline has been
producing a lot of good nights for the A&E Television Network
since the January 2004 debut of what production company Granada
Entertainment calls a docu-soap of Southwests interaction with its
customers.
Todays filming is
for the shows third season, which debuts May 2.
Each week, the
show provides real-life footage of angry, frustrated or drunken
passengers; other conflicts; strange incidents; and human-interest
stories, such as a woman reuniting with the son she gave up for
adoption 42 years earlier.
With the shows
continuing popularity, Travel Weekly went behind the scenes to find
out how it all comes together.
Arent those
cameras and microphones intrusive? How does the show persuade
passengers to sign a consent form, without which they cant be shown
on air, after they make idiots of themselves?
Along the way,
well witness the camaraderie the TV crew has established with
airline employees, most of whom seem to consider them part of the
South- west family or a natural part of the airport.
Well discover
some changes in store for the new season, including a big move for
one of the shows stars. Well meet a singing puppet. Well discover
how a diaper-change gone bad can almost ground an
aircraft.
Beginnings
As the workday
begins, Naylor places microphones on the customer-service
supervisors. She uses a boom mike to pick up sounds from other
employees and customers.
Also here is
Scott Mislan, producer/director and cameraman for this BWI crew. A
Southwest representative -- Jeffrey Van Voast -- is on hand as
facilitator and escort, to smooth the way for the crew. Series
producer Jane Eames also is on hand, mainly because she prefers to
be present when a reporter and photographer tag along.
The crew often
hangs out with the supervisors, who carry two-way radios to alert
them of problems and needs. Van Voast has one, too, keeping tabs.
Naylor can hear the supervisors she has miked.
Associate
producer Matt Cohn occasionally roams the terminal, eyeing the
gates. Hes looking for problems and human-interest
stories.
Sometimes
Southwest will tell the crew about a pending traveler whose story
might be compelling, but not today. Cohn will ask ticket agents
what theyve heard, but hell also look for clues that someone has a
story to tell -- a worried face, a bouquet of flowers -- and strike
up a conversation. But so far, hes not finding much.
Reel
life
Suddenly, Mislan
and Naylor are on the move. Word has come of two people fighting on
an arriving aircraft, and they are rushing to ensure they get there
with the camera and sound equipment before the flights arrival. The
crew spends a lot of its day on the run, so much so that it toyed
with the idea of using a pedometer to track their
mileage.
Most of the time,
the crew is running back and forth -- from terminal to baggage area
to check-in counter -- for what turn out to be false alarms or
incidents that fizzle out.
The shows
producers have at least one crew working at four airports -- Los
Angeles, Chicago Midway, Houston and BWI -- to piece together
enough incidents to make the shows for the third season. But crews
arent at the airport 24 hours a day, and what they get can be
highly dependent on luck, timing and hustle.
Mislan and Naylor
arrive with plenty of time to spare; it turns out the flight wont
arrive at the gate for another 20 minutes or so. They stand at the
open-air end of the jetway with customer-service supervisor
Nicholas Hadeed, a show regular with a buoyant personality. He will
try to get both sides of the story and play peacemaker. But
law-enforcement officers are standing behind him, in case things
get out of hand.
Hadeed stops to
talk to one of the passengers the second he steps off the aircraft.
The passenger starts to explain how he became the unjustified
target of another passengers long barrage of cursing and verbal
abuse, but cuts himself short when he notices the
camera.
Do they have to
be in my face? he asks.
They dont have to
be, Hadeed responds. But when he also explains, Its for the show
Airline, the passenger drops his objections. OK, OK, he says
nonchalantly, then continues with his complaint.
Not everyone
agrees to the presence of the camera and the microphone boom.
Several people today will wave the camera away. But most sign
consent forms after being filmed, even a woman who was shown being
arrested and placed in a squad car in an earlier episode, even the
angry passenger who told a flight attendant in the second season, I
hope your plane crashes. I hope you die.
Some customers do
it for their 15 minutes of fame. But most do it because they think
they actually will come across as the reasonable ones, or because
they think it will prove to Southwest executives that they were
mistreated, said crew members and show producers.
Southwest
higher-ups do watch the show. Theres no evidence it has ever helped
a customers cause, but viewings of the first seasons episodes
prompted Southwest President Colleen Barrett to change a policy
after seeing how the airline dealt with inebriated customers, Van
Voast said.
Before July 4,
2004, the customer-service supervisor had discretion to decide when
a customer became sober enough to board a flight. Since then,
anyone deemed too intoxicated to board a flight must wait at least
eight hours to fly.
We in the company
sometimes learn just as much as the public does by watching the
show, Van Voast said.
For employees,
the camera and boom also take some getting used to, particularly
those who arent regulars. But regulars seem immune.
You adapt to it,
Hadeed said. I just view the camera being there as a
customer.
Out on the jetway
and in the terminal, theres no confrontation between the two
passengers once off the aircraft, and the post-flight interviews
fizzle out. The only source of amusement comes when one of those
passengers, who claimed to have needed a wheelchair, rushes off so
quickly that Cohn can barely keep up with him to talk him into
signing a consent form.
Star
turns
Airline has its
stars, strong or engaging personalities who come across well on TV
and attract a fan base. They are the most telegenic and media-savvy
and good at explaining situations on the fly, which is critical
because the show wants employees to do that on camera in the middle
of the action.
At BWI,
customer-service supervisor Gina Terrano is one of those stars, and
with a lull in the afternoon, the crew is paying her a visit in the
baggage-service department. But Terrano wont be here long: She is
leaving soon for Dallas to train to become a flight
attendant.
Terrano admits
her future on the show crossed her mind as she mulled whether to
switch jobs. But her fans neednt worry because the show plans to
film her progress. Its a good storyline, said Eames, the producer,
who thinks it helps the series to follow the progress of its
characters.
Terrano says she
is nervous about flight-attendant school, especially the written
tests. Im not good at tests, she confides.
Back in the
terminal, the crew runs into an employee who is eagerly awaiting
her turn in the limelight. Eames said flight attendant Regina Sofia
has been lobbying to get on the show.
I love Southwest,
and I want everyone to know how much fun we have, Sofia
explains.
Sofias appearance
on Airline would be fitting because she said the show helped
convince her to apply for a job with Southwest about a year
ago.
Her response is
not unusual. In spite of the irrational passengers often featured
on the show, Southwest said it is consistently flooded with
applications the day after Airline airs. Sofia said she considered
the bad behavior by some customers part of life, but what hooked
her was the attitude of the employees and the companys
culture.
When Sofia, who
performed in high school theater and in stage plays, saw the show
where employees sang in airports for Christmas and attendants sang
and joked in flight, she decided,This is for me.
Now part of the
airline, she is putting her theatrical inclinations to use with
hand puppets and a ventriloquist puppet named Katie, with black
yarn hair, pigtails, big brown eyes and a red mouth. If the time
seems right, shell introduce Katie or another puppet to amuse the
passengers or lead them in song, including old standards like Youre
a Grand Old Flag she has rewritten to include Southwest-themed
lyrics.
This day, Sofia
happens to be passing through the airport as the crew is filming.
She takes out Katie, clad in a pink sweatsuit, and serenades an
amused Hadeed with a Southwest song another employee penned to the
tune of the Flintstones theme: Thanks for, flying Southwest. Were
the airline making history. From the town of Love Field, its our
golden opportunity.
Sofia may have a
good shot to get on the air because Eames said she wants this third
season to include more in-flight footage of attendants and the
interaction between them and the passengers. Thats something the
show did for the first time in the second season.
Up in the air is
very different, Eames said. It is usually less confrontational, she
said, highlighted by employees personality and their singing and
comedy.
Unfortunately for
Sofia, by late April she still had not been filmed in flight. The
crew had tried, she said, but could not get onboard with her
because her flights were full of spring break travelers.
Baby
talk
Shortly before 8
p.m., word comes of a problem on an incoming flight. They soon
learn a woman tried to change her babys diaper in the front row,
and an accident occurred in the middle of the process. The fallout
was scattered over all three of her front row seats and the nearby
bulkhead.
Mislan filmed as
Southwest employees removed the cushions from the three seats and
cleaned up what remained, and the airline decided whether it could
make the aircraft suitable to fly so it could avoid waiting at
least 90 minutes for a backup.
Then Mislan and
Naylor went to the gate, hoping to find angry or frustrated
customers waiting for the flight, none of whom were being told the
unvarnished truth about the reason for the delay. The crew expected
to find something, es- pecially since some of the customers were
sent to this gate when another flight was canceled or delayed.
Unfortunately for the crew, the customers took the delay in
stride.
Nothing else of
consequence will happen today. By days end, the crew is playing
jokes on Hadeed by having other Southwest employees call him to
mock incidents that make him run around the airport.
The relatively
uneventful day means Mislan will be waiting a while longer for
fulfillment on any of the three wishes he first made last season
but which have yet to be granted.
I wanted a
fistfight, I wanted projectile vomiting and I wanted a live birth,
Mislan said.
Theres always
tomorrow.
After the
filming, the real work begins
What happens once
Airline filming is done? The shows directors at the various U.S.
airports write logs of the stories they shoot and grade them from A
to E. Producer/director Scott Mislan, leading a crew at BWI, said
he spends 11 hours in a typical week reviewing seven tapes before
handing them to series producer Jane Eames, whose main job is to
run the operation in the U.S.
Eames, in turn,
reviews the tapes and sends them to series producer James Dean at
Granada Entertainments London headquarters, for review by Dean or
one of his three directors there. Thats where Dean puts together
the show.
Most incidents
that make the show will be A or B, with A usually reserved for
longer stories with a good beginning and ending. Our best stories
are ones that just wont quit. Someone will not let it go, Dean
said. B is for a story that might not be particularly surprising
but has good characters, he said. A C is another step down, but
Dean estimates 60% of them make the show because they fit in with a
theme.
I banned D and E,
Dean added. The turnaround is quite fast, and I dont want to waste
time watching stuff that isnt going to get in.
Dean had about
two months to put together the first two shows, which aired as
back-to-back episodes. But he usually has about two weeks of
editing time, plus a week to incorporate suggested changes from
Granada and A&E. The producers also run the shows by Southwest,
but Dean insisted thats only to ensure the show adequately explains
Southwests policies. Dean said Granada and A&E wont and cant
let Southwest decide the content of the show, because then people
wouldnt watch it.
Following the
first season, the show has made more of an effort to include
human-interest stories, Eames said. One recent example: A strongman
trying to win competitions in memory of his wife, who died of a
brain tumor. After he was interviewed on camera, the camera
followed him at the airport and through part of a competition,
which he won. Dean said such stories put a human face on
Southwest.
But viewers still
see plenty of conflict and complaining customers. Some
second-season episodes showed overbooking situations that didnt put
Southwest in a flattering light. And the drunken travelers that
seem to frequent the show probably are here to stay.
Dean said viewers
like the drunken-traveler stories, which include amusement and
conflict and require judgment calls from employees. Its just part
of what the show is, he said.
How real
is it?
Some airline
customer-service employees apparently have a hard time believing
what they see on the show Airline, not because of how
confrontational and irrational some of the customers get, but
because they are convinced the show omits situations that are even
worse.
The show really
shows [Southwest employees] making it work, no matter how bad it
is, said Jan Murray, who has worked for America West for 15 years
at the airport ticket counter, in a recent interview. Its not as
realistic as it could be.
Richard
Marinaccio, who has been working in America West customer service
for more than five years, said his mother has seen the show and
tells him, I cant believe you have to deal with this. His response:
This is nothing. This is positive.
A lot of the
time, he said, drunken or irate customers have to be escorted out
of the airport by police. But he said he hasnt seen that happen on
Airline.
(This does occur
in at least one episode, which ends with a woman arrested and
placed in a police car, but series producer James Dean acknowledged
some security services and police ask not to be filmed.)
Nonetheless,
Murray and Marinaccio believe the show has worth in showing what
they deal with on a day-to-day basis.
It shows how
stupid people act when they are at an airport, Murray
said.
To contact
reporter Andrew Compart, send e-mail to [email protected].