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BWI Shows Students ‘Without a Heart, it’s just a machine.’

KarenPriceWard
Employee
Employee

It's certainly true at Southwest Airlines that “Without a Heart, it’s just a machine.”  Twenty-four BWI Employees put their Heart into showing how they are more than just a 365-day operation. The Southwest BWI Employees served up a heaping amount of Hospitality by hosting 13 aviation-curious students from the First Baptist Church of Glenarden (FBCG) Aviation Career Education Camp.  The Maryland middle and high school students enjoyed a "Southwest Day" of hands-on learning with tours by various BWI departments including:
  • Provisioning where they saw all the items used to stock the planes and feed our Customers;
  • Cargo where they witnessed firsthand the processing of live gold fish and live crabs for Next Flight Guaranteed (NFG) shipping, as well as observing the K9 sniffing packages for hazardous materials
  • Pilot Base where they observed how pilots check in for flights;
  • Inflight Training where they actually sat in a training raft and learned about emergency preparedness;
  • T-Point where they toured three baggage processing areas and learned about international baggage processing versus domestic processing;
  • Customer Service where they learned about Customer flight check-in;
  • and the Command Center where they watched the entire BWI operation on monitors and heard the communication between the pilots and operation staff.
 
To add a cherry to the top of the visit, the BWI Station Leadership, Chief Pilots, and Maintenance spent a great deal of time answering questions about aviation and the Southwest operation from very curious and intrigued students. In addition to the Southwest Day, the students met the FAA Director and U.S. Secretary of Transportation as well as visited the Potomac TRACON and Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center, Patuxent Naval Air Station, Washington Reagan National Air Traffic Control Tower, and flew Cessnas 172.  The FBCG capped off the week with a cookout and thanked the BWI Employees for making a HUGE impact in the lives of these developing students. In August, to make a positive difference for youth in Baltimore, BWI and Southwest Airlines HDQ Employees from various departments will host another Southwest Airlines day.  Southwest has partnered with TSA, AirMall, Maryland Aviation Administration, and the city to host 60 students in a summer initiative camp.  The students attend for one week and have been selected from five recreation centers that were located in the middle of the Baltimore civil unrest.