Plane Truths: American Goes WirelessPlane Truths: American Goes Wireless

American Airlines Inc. is the latest company to turn to wirelessly enabled PDAs to improve its business process over previous paper-based systems. In this case, the air carrier is using wide area network systems and PDAs to track and process cargo shipments in and out of at least seven major U.S. airports.

American is working with @hand Corp. for the applications and management system used with approximately 100 Palm OS devices provided by Symbol Technologies Inc., which send status reports back and forth to American's Sabre travel-management system. Using the systems, American hopes to reduce misdirected or lost shipments and create greater efficiencies in routing shipments from one hub to the next.

The @hand applications, in the device and on the network, allow communications to be interrupted and restarted without losing data. That's essential in an airport, where machines and competing frequency systems can be common, says Larry Metter, managing director of cargo operations support for American in Dallas.

American uses bar-coding and radio-frequency systems to track cargo, but they don't work outside its buildings, where employees are loading and unloading cargo.

The airline's challenge is to communicate with employees in an environment with a lot of metal and airplanes. "We're going to use a handheld device that has [Cellular Digital Packet Data] capabilities, and we will use it to scan cargo at various locations where there is no [radio-frequency] infrastructure in place," Metter says.

Data and text devices also have other advantages in a busy airport.

"We traditionally use radios, but there is so much voice radio traffic it's easy to miss those communications. Also, airports tend to be rather loud, so this is a way to communicate back and forth and make sure it isn't missed," Metter says.

Cargo shipments represent only 4% of American's total revenue, but that still amounted to $740 million in business last year, Metter says. While he won't guess at the system's actual monetary improvement, American fully expects to get a substantial return on investment. But the biggest return, he says, "will be in customer service."

American's cargo division intends to begin using the devices by August.