On Day Before Holiday, Many Giving Thanks for the Skycaps

Thanksgiving travelers know not what they do.

Their odyssey to the airport leaves them out of breath, short-tempered and shouting for help like lost children.

Skycap Hasanjee Bholat has seen grown men toss their luggage onto the roadway by the terminal and storm off in a huff. He has refused the $20 bills that desperate travelers push into his palm for faster service. He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t budge either for travelers who want to check in a slew of extra suitcases, beyond what the airlines allow, for no extra charge.

After more than 10 years at Los Angeles International Airport, he has mastered a Zen-like calm as frantic strangers barrage him with questions and unreasonable demands.

“We are the first contact they have,” the 60-year-old skycap from Lawndale said. “We are the first person to get hurt.”

Today is one of the busiest travel days of the year, when thousands of anxious locals will leave work early to throw some clothes into a suitcase, round up the kids, drop off the dog and race to the airport. For Bholat and the four men he supervises at Continental Airlines’ curbside check-in stand, the day before Thanksgiving at LAX usually is a kind of Super Bowl without the cheers.

At John Wayne Airport, though, some skycaps shrugged off suggestions that today might be difficult.

“Don’t believe that stuff,” said Eric Burke, who has worked at the airport for two decades. “It’s not like that here. It’s not like it used to be.”

In years past, passengers would line the curb for hours waiting to check their baggage, said skycap Alton Haywood, but the routine has been streamlined.

“The bottom line is that we do like it busy; we like it to be steady,” said Haywood, a skycap for 12 years.

The holiday spirit occasionally boosts the amount of tips given for curbside service, he said, but not by much.

“A lot of people tip, and a lot of people don’t tip,” said Haywood, whose gratuities average $1 a bag. “Someone may not tip me, but then someone makes up for it.”

One 15-year veteran speculated that Thanksgiving Day might be at least as hectic as today. “I bet Thursday morning will be even busier,” said 15-year skycap Greg Brown. “People will try to skip the crowds and leave on Thanksgiving morning.”

At LAX on Tuesday morning, traffic crawled and car horns blared. People late for flights bumped and pushed one another.

Bholat watched calmly as one well-dressed man unloaded 14 bags into the street. When the skycap directed him to wait in line at the curbside counter, the man stormed inside without a word. He left his bags.

“Sometimes they come in with a very bad attitude,” Bholat said. Then, to his skycaps, he said: “Don’t touch his bags! Something happens, he says we lost his bags.” Later, the man returned and one of Bholat’s crew loaded up his luggage on a cart and took it inside the terminal.