Skycaps Will Pay Price of New Rules

Airports might be slowly getting back to normal, but the job of curbside skycaps has likely changed for a long time to come, perhaps forever.

In the wake of the New York and Washington terrorist attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration has banned curbside check-ins that allowed passengers to skip long lines at airport counters. For passengers it was a timesaving convenience. For skycaps who sometimes waited years to get the job, it generated tips rumored to provide them with six-figure incomes.

“Curbside is over,” said skycap Herbert Walker, who has worked at San Jose International Airport for 23 years. “I have no job.”

“It’s like seven days a week we were eating steak, now it will be just two days,” said Antonio Munelo, who has been a skycap at San Francisco International Airport for 12 years. “It will change forever.”

Under the new rules, skycaps will still be permitted to help people with their bags from vehicles into the terminals and do other baggage-handling work.

But the restrictions will cut skycaps off from their biggest--and most lucrative--pool of tippers: time-sensitive business travelers who are more eager to tip at the curb than stand in a ticket-counter line.

This is especially vital considering that skycaps depend on tips for up to two-thirds of their take-home pay. Their base wages, for example, are $6.25 an hour in San Jose and $10 an hour in San Francisco.

“The gold, platinum people, they don’t want to stand in line,” Walker said. “We have customers who come to us personally every week. They wait for us. We’ve built a relationship with these people.”

Officials at Southwest Airlines said they did not foresee layoffs among skycaps.

“There’s plenty for them to do inside, so we’ll put them to work where it needs to be done,” said airline spokeswoman Whitney Brewer.

But “inside” work is not always as desirable. Los Angeles resident Juan Monsalvo, 37, worked as a ticket agent for more than 10 years, working his way up to supervisor before giving that up to become a skycap. He and many others interviewed Thursday believe they are scapegoats.

“They want to show the public they’re doing something to fix security. It’s like always, the people on the bottom get hurt first,” Monsalvo said.

He believes that skycaps have been the first line of defense in baggage security.

“We’re dealing with human beings here,” he said. “When somebody checks a bag, you can physically see the person.”

Skycaps are required to pass tests on security regulations before getting their positions and then are periodically retested.

“This is actually going to be worse because people behind the ticket counter are going to be so stressed--you’re going to have hundreds of people in the terminal bumping into each other, bags will be unattended,” Monsalvo said.

He was far from alone in believing that skycaps were unfairly feeling the brunt of the new security measures.

Ronald Weathers, 46, a skycap at Los Angeles International Airport, noted that skycaps follow the same security steps as workers at gates, including asking passengers if they packed their luggage themselves and have kept it with them at all times.

“The terrorists who boarded the planes in Boston, they went through security,” Weathers said. “We go through the same security process here. I don’t see where this makes any big difference.”

Some security experts, however, believe its safer to have baggage and passengers checked at ticket counters, where more security officers are stationed.

Skycaps might get training similar to ticket agents, but also could have their judgment compromised by the fact that they depend on tips from fliers.

Skycaps still will be able to earn tips from people who want their baggage carried to the counter lines. Munelo believed many who used curbside check-in wouldn’t bother. “Some only have two pieces of luggage; they won’t need help,” he said.

Curbside check-in was temporarily halted during the Gulf War in 1991 and after the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996. Some skycaps were hopeful that the new ban also will be lifted at some point, perhaps several months from now.

“A few of us have been through this before,” said Ismael Reyes, 42, a skycap at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. “My gut feeling is, it is temporary.”

But others believe that the magnitude of this tragedy might put a permanent end to curbside check-ins and its bounty of tips.

“The cost of living in San Francisco is too high,” said skycap Emilio Galera, who has worked at San Francisco International Airport for 10 years. His rent for a studio apartment is $800 a month. “If they pay $10 an hour, how much is that?” he said, adding that he might have to get a second job.

Walker would like to get a different job, but he fears that his prospects are limited because he has been working at airports for 23 years and knows little else. “I’m 45 years old. I’m going to ride this out,” he said.

Weathers added: “This job and my wife are the two best things that ever happened in my life.”

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Times staff writers Nancy Cleeland and Kimi Yoshino contributed to this report.