Category: Noticias

Every day, thousands of people pass through McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. Whether it’s going on vacation or visiting family, each person has a story to tell, and that is exactly why Luke Villamor enjoys working in the airport. As the Operations Manager for SAS Services, he sets up a game plan every single day to ensure that passengers have the wheelchairs they need to get to their next flight. Given his title, he knows the importance of a smooth, hiccup-free shift, which means he’s often stepping in and pushing wheelchairs, when needed. While some people might be opposed to rolling up their sleeves and diving in, this is exactly where Luke thrives. This Hawaiian native is always looking for ways to build rapport and cultivate relationships, and sometimes relationships start with gate to gate transport.

Growing up in Kalihi, Hawaii, Luke was always surrounded by family and friends. His personable and organized nature led him to work for SAS Solutions at the Honolulu Airport nearly two and a half years ago. During a shift, he helped push two elderly passengers who needed wheelchair rides from their gate. In that short period, he found out that they were high school sweethearts who had been together for 65 years. “No one stays together for that long!” Luke said. “It was so cool to hear how they met.” The San Diego-based couple has a second home in Hawaii and, after their conversation that day, they remembered him every time they passed through. With the kind of disposition where perfect strangers feel comfortable telling him their life stories, Luke has built relationships that stretch far beyond his network of family and friends.

It’s that very character that has served Luke well during his move from Hawaii to Las Vegas. His parents moved to Las Vegas to pursue bigger opportunities, and Luke and his younger brother soon followed suit. Faced with starting over away from the only home he’s ever known, Luke took it all in stride. At 22, the Operations Manager title that he holds is typically reserved for people much older, but he’s earned that title because he makes a concerted effort every day to build a strong bond with his coworkers. By building trust and respect, and going out of his way to invest in both his team and the people he meets, Luke has acclimated to the Las Vegas desert as seamlessly as possible.

There is, however, one thing he really misses about Hawaii. “The beaches!” he laughs. “I’ve never seen any beaches that compare to anything in Hawaii. Not many people get to grow up in a place like that.” He looks forward to his annual trip home to enjoy time with family and friends, as well as the opportunity to do some snorkeling or body boarding. In the interim, he gets his beach fix by making the drive to Los Angeles as often as possible. While the beaches don’t compare to the tropical shores of Hawaii, they are a small taste of home for the now landlocked Hawaiian.

Now, as the former baseball player (left field) and avid Pittsburgh sports fan continues to forge new paths in Las Vegas, he’s excited about the people he’s met through SAS and hopeful that the Steelers can pull out a Super Bowl win. For now, he’ll have to be content with the Penguins’ Stanely Cup, which isn’t so bad. “He’s only 28,” Luke says, referring to Penguins Captain, Sidney Crosby. “So he’s got a few more good years left in him.” At 22 and with the world at his feet, the same can be said about Luke Villamor.

This soon-to-be mother of two is working to build a better life for her family, and she wakes up (early!) every morning with a renewed resolve to conquer it all.

Often, our present lives don’t look the way they did in our minds when we were planting seeds and tending dreams – but there are times when we look back at each individual piece that directed our paths, and suddenly life makes sense. Those tokens, picked up along the way, serve as reminders of the journey and make us proud of where we are today. This is how Arleny Perea-Nobles, a Dispatcher at SAS Services, feels about her life and mission every day. She’s seen her fair share of ups and downs, but she keeps moving forward with steadfast resiliency.

Each morning at 3.45am, she arrives at work to organize and mobilize a team at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a dispatcher, and her team ensures that disabled airline passengers have wheelchairs ready and waiting to take them to wherever they need to go. She knows that if her team fails, passengers may miss their flights, wreaking havoc on an extremely busy airport. While it sounds simple, flight delays, gate changes or staffing shifts threaten to derail their ability to get passengers the wheelchairs they need. To avoid this, they must run a tight ship that is both nimble and organized. Some people might buckle under the pressure, but Arleny thrives on it.

As the sole provider for her family, she knows a thing or two about staying cool and calm in stressful situations. “Even as a kid, I was telling the other kids what to do and where to go,” laughs the pregnant, married mother of one. “I was assigning tasks from a young age, so it seems that dispatching was a natural fit.” Operating under pressure isn’t always easy, but her soon-to- be growing family is the motivation she needs to keep going every single day.

In looking back, she realized that life was directing her down this path, and she needed to be on board for the ride. Born in West Hollywood, her father moved her family to Las Vegas when she was just three years old. Soon after, when she was in fifth grade, a good friend’s mom who worked for a power company as a dispatcher invited the girls to come to her work and see her office. Arleny had never seen a maze of cubicles, and was in awe of the building. “They took us unto this room and it looked like something off TV,” she remembers. “It was like the inside of a spaceship – it was so cool!” After watching her friend’s mom work and seeing how things operated so seamlessly, she felt a pull towards becoming a dispatcher, and she later got her foot in the door with a Las Vegas taxi cab company. When the taxi market became unstable, she found SAS Services by randomly applying through a Craigslist ad. She loves her job and company and, most importantly, it allows her to keep her family afloat.

During her rare downtime, she’s been known to let loose at a Zumba class, be the friendly neighborhood pool shark, catch a lacrosse game, or rock out to her favorite metal band, The Devil Wears Prada. In fact, she’s such a big fan that she has the band’s name tattooed on her wrist! As she lives her life each day, awaiting the arrival of a new baby, she seeks to extract as much joy and opportunity as possible and to be a better person for her kids. Failure is never an option, and the life she has made for her family continues to drive her forward in both work and play. Her motto is to put one foot in front of the other, and she is proud of where she’s at and what she’s accomplished – and she can’t wait to see what the future holds.

An aircraft is an airline’s greatest asset, and that asset generates revenue only when it’s in the air transporting passengers to their next destination. It’s no surprise that the goal of every airline team member – from gate agent to baggage handler – is to quickly prepare each aircraft for its next flight. With flight delays alone costing airlines around $8 billion per year, it’s imperative that airline operations run smoothly.

Avianca, South America’s second-largest carrier, knows the importance of having the right crew available at exactly the right time to make this possible. When Avianca needed to optimize its workforce and gain complete visibility into gate-level operations, Springshot emerged as the solution to give the airline the right tools to keep flights running on schedule.

Headquartered at Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport (BOG), Avianca must keep aircraft moving on time at one of the busiest airports in the world. “Above the wing” employees focus on indoor operations, which include ticketing and terminal needs. “Below the wing” ramp agents marshal aircraft into the gates, clean planes, dispose of sewage, refuel, load baggage, and transport catering. A shift lead is assigned to each incoming aircraft and that person is responsible for all ramp agent activity until that flight takes off again. Previously, shift leads would manually report information to terminal managers, but information was delayed, making it difficult to make necessary adjustments before issues would arise.

With the project Avianca is launching with Springshot, terminal managers will have the ability to identify time critical activities by shift leader, flight, and all ramp personnel for every Avianca aircraft that passes through BOG. Information will be reported in real-time directly to Avianca’s Hub Control, where team members can isolate where operations are most prone to fail by flight, market, or gate. Hub Control team members will be notified automatically of potential issues to which they may respond proactively to avoid costly delays. With Springshot, Avianca’s planes have a higher probability of running on time, which keeps more flights in the air and generating greater revenue for the airline.

Avianca is a forward-thinking airline looking for forward-thinking operations to match its corporate vision. Springshot is proud to provide the right technology to meet Avianca’s needs.

Alaskan homesteading, eight children, and a career in aviation have prepared Michelle McWhiter for whatever adventure comes next.

From the time her family moved to Alaska when she was three years old to the first time she flew a plane as a teen cadet to now, Michelle McWhirter has always had an adventurous, independent spirit.

The principles Michelle’s family lived by were persistence, patience and perseverance. “It served me well,” Michelle says. “I always had this sense of adventure and desire to see what was around the corner.”

For Michelle, it’s been one adventure after the next, including a long period of homesteading in rural Alaska during her twenties. Using a generator for electricity and outhouses that her family built, Michelle also grew her own vegetables—including more than a thousand pounds of potatoes. Her family kept horses, pigs, chickens and goats, and the land was populated with spruces, poplars and birches. Surrounded by mountains, it was a picturesque place representing years of hard work.

As her family grew, Michelle eventually moved away from the homesteading lifestyle. “I have an alarming amount of children,” Michelle says with a laugh. Eight, to be exact—they span more than 20 years in age.

While she raised her children, Michelle took on a number of jobs to support her family. She sold crafts to local shops and markets, and even sewed thousands of booties for the dogs racing in the famous Alaskan tradition, the Iditarod. Michelle also pursued her passion for writing.

When her children were older, she began working at Fairbanks International for an aviation vendor that serves Alaska Airlines as a fleet acting supervisor. At the same time, she was also working as a certified medical assistant in long-term care. Between her two jobs, Michelle was working more than 60 hours a week.

Often there would be three planes on the ground at any given time, and Michelle had to coordinate all those crews.

When her company introduced Springshot, Michelle saw the immediate benefits it brought to her team and enjoyed helping her colleagues use the technology to track their work and keep in touch with each other.

Michelle recently moved to Anchorage and is ready for her next adventure.

Tower Director at LaGuardia Airport, Caroline Garcia has a strong connection with her family and a vision for her future built on their hard work.

Caroline’s story started many years before she was born when her mother, Teresa, landed at JFK in 1976. Teresa arrived expecting to meet her Aunt at the arrival gates. She knew no one in New York City, had never been outside of her home country, Ecuador, and struggled to speak English. After waiting and waiting, she soon realised that  no one was coming to meet her. She found herself alone in a foreign city, with nowhere to stay and no return ticket to fly home.

On her flight to New York, Caroline’s mother had chatted to the woman sitting next to her. Little did she know how impactful this small talk would be. As she was deciding whether to remain at the airport or catch a cab into the city alone, the same woman from her flight approached her, offered her a place to stay and a job to get started. This was the start of her new beginning.

As with many new immigrants in New York, Teresa soon found a community of other Ecuadorians with similar backgrounds where she could maintain her own cultural traditions while embracing the customs of the new country she now called home. She eventually married a native Ecuadorian and raised her family just outside of Manhattan in Queens.

When Teresa first landed on the tarmac at JFK, on that fateful day in ‘76, she had no way of knowing that 30 years later, her daughter Caroline would start working in the airport tower there, guiding planes and air control while watching people land everyday in The Big City.

Born and raised in Queens, Caroline is deeply grateful to her parents for everything in her life. They’ve shaped her outlook on life, and have always motivated her to keep moving forward. And now, as a 25 year old, Caroline values consistency, authenticity, hard work and hustle.

Caroline is proud and passionate about her aviation career that she started when she was 18. Thanks to her ‘work’ family, there aren’t many Mondays that Caroline dreads. Working across JFK and LaGuardia, she’s a familiar face around the airport and has many stories to tell. Between watching an entire airport go into quarantine (when a passenger accidently went through one of the side doors into the terminal), and seeing a plane come to a halt on the tarmac to let a mother turtle and her baby turtles cross, she’s seen it all.

While Caroline loves her job, she hopes she’ll return back to school one day to finish her studies in aviation to become part of the air traffic control team that has direct contact with the captains of the aircrafts. Her parents have always encouraged her to test her limits and strive to reach for the highest level in her field. Having both struggled in their youths, they form a united front behind Caroline, acting as pillars of strength and some of the best Pokeno players she’s seen.

Along with continuing her studies, Caroline hopes to visit more of her family in Ecuador to learn and understand more of her heritage and family traditions. Until then, she’ll continue to work at one of the biggest entry and exit points in the United States. One where her parents crossed long ago to start a new American-Ecuadorian generation and one where she’ll continue to pass as she explores the world and grows in every way she can.

Favorite movie: Interview with the Vampire
Most important travel item: Hiking shoes
If you could have dinner with anyone (alive or living) who would it be? Dinner with my grandparents because I never got to meet them, as they passed before I was born.
Favorite city: San juan, Puerto Rico

Every day, thousands of aircraft take off and land at over 41,000 airports, each of which must be unloaded, cleaned and prepped for the next departure. A single plane is serviced by dozens of airline employees who have approximately 45 minutes to ensure that the aircraft is ready and available for takeoff. Given the tight timeframe and domino effect of one late flight, crews must work quickly and have little margin for error. Now, with Springshot’s newly installed beacon technology at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, automated workforce optimization is possible, and airlines in the Pacific Northwest are now isolating and addressing the root cause of flight delays.

Previously, aircraft service operations were monitored using inefficient processes. Aviation worker data was collected using clipboards and manual time stamps by a supervisor and, due to time constraints, audits were often conducted only once or twice per week. This painted an incomplete picture of worker productivity that was unable to accurately reflect staffing or operational needs. Supervisors were then tasked with making adjustments based on this information, resulting in reactive decisions that did not address issues or complications before they happened.

With beacon technology installed at the gates, aviation workers’ movements and tasks are tracked automatically through their smartphones via Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) network. Each day, hundreds of data inputs are collected and, rather than monitoring worker movements using a clipboard, a supervisor can now review and analyze incoming data using the Springshot interface. As patterns emerge, supervisors can determine what drives potential issues in advance and make staffing or operational changes accordingly. The result is a more efficient operation that gets workers to the right place, at the right time, to keep aircraft running on schedule. Fewer late flights result in fewer cancellations, allowing airlines to capture maximum revenue for each aircraft.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport joins Atlanta Hartsfield and New York LaGuardia as the newest airport to implement beacon technology for aviation operations. Installation is also scheduled for a number of other major North American airports later this year.

Product Integration Manager for Springshot, with an extensive background in aviation, Geneve Salazar learnt the value of hard work at a young age and now loves exploring her own heritage and new cultures.

There are many things that Geneve loves about traveling; the feeling of discovering a new place, connecting with local culture and coming back with stories to share with friends and family. After spending years devoted to her work in aviation which limited her ability to travel, Geneve is now building up those frequent flyer points and taking on the world for all it has to offer!

Growing up in a small town 30 minutes from McAllen, Texas, Geneve’s Spanish and Italian roots influenced her love of travel and importance of family. When she was 5 years old, her father passed away, leaving her mother to raise her 7 children on her own. While other children her age spent carefree summers at the beaches and pools, Geneve spent the summers working tirelessly in the fields for 13 years, bundling broccoli in Nebraska, and then picking cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots in Ohio.

After moving to Seattle with her family in her twenties, Geneve put herself through college as a Medical Assistant where she worked in nursing homes, emergency rooms and doctor’s offices. In 1999, she started working in the aviation industry as a driver, trainer, dispatcher, supervisor and performance manager.

As a single parent, Geneve worked long and unpredictable hours to provide everything she could for her son and daughter, and while she missed a lot of their precious teen years she found solace in knowing that they stayed out of trouble, did well in school and appreciated the sacrifices their mother made for them. She also instilled her children with a love and appreciation for other countries and cultures.

She recounts one of her fondest memories:

Geneve and her family don’t need to leave the country to find adventure. They are often the first to arrive and the last people to leave Silverwood Theme Park, enduring long lines for rollercoaster rides, including her 3 year old granddaughter Skye who insists on riding on the “Pirate Ship” or “The After Shock” ride. Geneve is also an avid and competitive marathon runner and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Adrenaline runs deep in her blood.

Since joining Springshot, Geneve has been making her mark on an industry that has been such an important part of her life. She enjoys traveling to new cities, teaching people how to use the Springshot Platform and helping them get rid of their piles of paperwork.

Geneve beams with gratitude for the time she now has to watch her granddaughter, Skye, grow up. With a more flexible schedule, she is able to cook her dinner and hopes to be around to help her with her homework when she gets older.

With a passport full of stamps (she has traveled to over 50 cities across 13 countries), what’s next on Geneve’s bucketlist? She dreams of exploring her heritage in Spain and Italy and hopes that one day, her work will send her to Rio De Janeiro.

No matter where she is in the world, you’ll always be able to catch her, loud and proud, watching the Seahawks play.

Favorite movie: Gone with the wind
Most important travel item: Local currency
If you could have dinner with anyone (alive or living) who would it be? Dinner always with my children and granddaughter
Favorite sports team: Seattle Seahawks
Favourite city: Torn between Costa Rica and Lihue

Mark Pantilon travels light. He knows his way around airports—every other week, he heads to SFO for work-related travel, zipping through security without hassle. And for years, he worked in Cabin Service for Air Serv in the very same airport.

On the outside, Mark embodies professionalism. At 25, he was the youngest manager in charge of more than 100 employees and was tasked with turning his team’s reputation around. He got the job done by rallying the crew, showing them his vision and, above all, expressing gratitude to his colleagues.

Between shopping dates and partnering up for mud-crawling, bar-hanging, rope-swinging obstacle races, Janelle keeps Mark on his toes. As a young father, Mark learned to dedicate time, patience and understanding in developing his relationship with Janelle after some dark years with his own father.

Growing up, Mark and his two younger sisters were confronted with their father’s struggle with addiction. Mark’s stable and comfortable life in San Jose took an unexpected turn at 16 when his father lost his job, leaving the weight of their family on his mother’s shoulders. Mark’s family weathered a hurricane as they watched their father’s life unravel.

Mark held this close to him and promised to never let it become an excuse for wasting time. At 18, he began working for Air Serv where he met Doug Kreuzkamp, who has been a mentor to Mark for almost a decade. As a VP of Air Serv at the time, Doug nurtured Mark through the sometimes unpredictable obstacles of navigating a new career. Their relationship, however, was never contingent on hierarchy or hours at a desk.

On his 21st birthday, Mark was on his way to a meeting in San Diego that was cancelled last-minute. Unsure of how to spend the next few days in an unfamiliar city, Mark called Doug and explained the situation. Should he turn around and go back? “You just turned 21, right?” Doug asked. “Head out to town, have fun and enjoy yourself!”

Mark took a lot from Doug’s example. The trust and gratitude given to him influenced the way he would treat his own team one day, and as serendipity would decide, he discovered his favorite city, San Diego, for the first time.

In the shadows of his troubled family life, Mark faced the situation head-on and rose above it. The anger that was once inside of him transformed into a healthy and determined focus over the years, driving him to become a better son, brother and father. Between his colleagues and daughter, Mark is determined to brighten and enhance the lives around him.

And people clearly love working with him. By the time Mark is done visiting with new customers for Springshot launches, he knows nearly every employee’s name.

Mark knows from personal experience that compassion is key to earning people’s trust and raising morale, and that a “thank you” or “great job” goes a long way. He feels it’s his responsibility to be a leader people can look up to and to pass along the goodwill that was extended to him by Doug and others.

Now at 28 years old, Mark looks ahead to his future with his family. He plans on taking his daughter back to the Philippines, where he was born, and hopes to one day move to San Diego. But before all of that, he and Janelle have another obstacle race to get ready for. In some ways, he’s been preparing for it all his life.

Product Integration Manager for Springshot and former aviation Cabin Crew and General Manager, Tranna Washington is focused on helping people take the first step into a new direction

When she was just a teenager, Tranna Washington’s family moved from Cincinnati to Atlanta in search of better opportunities and a brighter future. But life has strange ways of showing you what’s important, even if you’re not ready to face it.

At eighteen, Tranna received news she could never have prepared for—the day after her partner’s birthday, he passed away. Thrust into single parenthood, Tranna made their one-year old daughter Shadia her sole priority.

Refusing to hand the responsibility of parenting to her family, Tranna jumped into employment, working as part of the cabin crew for Aramark, which performed work for Delta Air Lines. Her hours there formed a collection of thousands of early mornings and late nights. All without knowing what direction her efforts would take her, Tranna simply focused on the work in hopes that her daughter would one day have a life without burden.

Tranna worked her way up. After years of earning minimum wage, she got her first managers position at 21 years old, while the company paid for her to attend college to study Business Management. She took every overtime shift she could find, every weekend roster she could slot into and found herself counting her hours of sleep on one hand. At 23 she was promoted to Operations Manager and by 26 she became a General Manager.

Despite the long hours, Tranna never forgot who it was all for, and quality time with her daughter was not sacrificed. Shadia’s birthdays were the most important day of the year, and afternoon trips to Camp Creek Park for yogurt became a ritual.

While it might’ve been easy to give up, that was never an option to Tranna.

Eleven years later, those years of determination and grit have paid off. In July, Tranna joined Springshot after reconnecting with her former Air Serv colleague (and Springshot Director) Clint Powell. Now, she works flexible hours and has space to figure out what she actually enjoys to do outside of work. She hopes she’ll be able to show Shadia the world one day; a trip to London and a shopping date in Paris.

Most importantly, Tranna takes her daughter to school, cheerleading practice sessions, and track and field competitions. In fact, Shadia’s hours are more demanding than Tranna’s now—at 14, Shadia’s already in high school thanks to an advanced course load.

Tranna’s future plans lie in building a foundation to help those similar to her younger self—unsure of where to go and scared to turn their goals into action. And just like she vowed at 19 years old, her relationship with her daughter remains the most important part of her life.

The sentiment is clearly shared. “Do you need help with anything, Mom? Is there anything I can get you?” Shadia always asks after she gets home from school. “I love you, Mom,” she calls out every night before bed.

In those moments, Tranna finds what life was trying to give her for years: a future as bright and vivid as she imagined it would be when she was just a girl.