Monitoring a computer screen in Southwest Airlines’ new operations center at Denver International Airport, customer service supervisor Jim LaFrenz sees flight 658’s scheduled arrival from San Francisco is going to be delayed by at least an hour because of the Bay Area weather.

After dropping off and picking up passengers in Denver, it is scheduled to fly to Chicago and then on to Hartford, Conn., in a classic case of the airline’s hopscotching service across the country.

LaFrenz determines that at least 41 passengers — many boarding in Denver — could miss connections in Chicago. So, he kicks off a process of trying to reach as many of the travelers as possible to rebook them on an earlier flight.

Agents reach some on their cellphones and others with public address announcements. The carrier got 16 passengers on the earlier flight and had five rebook for the next day, LaFrenz said.

In the end, “we were able to get all of the passengers to (Chicago) in time to make their connections.”

Avoiding the hub system favored by rivals, Southwest has built itself into one of the nation’s largest airlines with point-to-point service and the creation of nine “megastations,” including DIA.

DIA is its fifth-largest and fastest-growing, said Dave LaPorte, the airline’s station manager in Denver.

After starting at DIA with 13 departures and two gates in January 2006, the airline now operates 144 departures out of 17 gates on the C concourse. Southwest handles about 30,000 passengers daily in Denver.

Watching the airline’s DIA operation for an afternoon shows how the carrier constantly monitors luggage check-in times, the minutes it takes to get a plane in and out, bag delivery times and more to make it all work.

Connecting opportunities

One of LaPorte’s challenges is to make Southwest’s operation at DIA work efficiently for connecting passengers.

To avoid long layovers between flights, the airline has built what it calls “intentional connecting opportunities,” or ICOs, into its Denver schedule.

“We have six flights arrive at exactly the same time, and all leave 35 minutes later,” LaPorte said.

In the morning, Southwest has an east-to-west ICO, with planes scheduled to arrive at DIA from Omaha; Indianapolis; Detroit; Minneapolis; Kansas City, Mo.; and Washington Dulles, all at 8 a.m., and then depart for Spokane, Wash.; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Oakland, Calif.; and Ontario, Calif.; at 8:35 a.m.

Southwest’s model of megastations with ICOs offers some of the revenue-maximizing opportunities of a hub, but not all, said James Higgins, an industry analyst who follows the carrier and other airlines for Soleil Securities in New York.

Hubs allow airlines to concentrate revenue generation by having a large number of connecting flights arriving within a relatively short period of time, he said.

At a typical hub, planes may be on the ground for 90 minutes to maximize connections, Higgins said. That’s in contrast to a Southwest system built around faster turnaround times.

The bags

For ICOs to work, Southwest not only needs flights to arrive on time, but it also requires nearly flawless execution from ramp agents who load and unload aircraft and ferry bags between planes.

The goal is to have Denver-bound passengers’ bags on the luggage carousel 20 minutes after a plane reaches the gate.

That’s a challenge because Southwest tug drivers hauling luggage carts must travel at least 1 1/4 miles in underground tunnels to reach the terminal.

As challenging as it is to accommodate destination passengers, “transfers are the most difficult,” LaPorte concedes. “Frankly, it’s a headache.”

To move bags from one plane to another, Southwest typically had assigned a tug driver to pick up all transferring bags from an inbound flight and distribute them to multiple outbound flights.

At DIA, Southwest is reversing the process.

“ICOs got us thinking; what if we tied a transfer driver to an outbound flight?” LaPorte said of the current system that has drivers collecting bags from numerous arriving flights for a specified departure.

The effectiveness of that approach still is in question.

Southwest’s current goal at DIA is to not exceed 6.5 reports of lost bags (“mishandled bags” in industry parlance) per 1,000 passengers.

Some days, the airline meets the goal, other days it doesn’t, LaPorte said.

U.S. airlines as a group experienced 3.79 mishandled bag reports per 1,000 passengers in July, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Systemwide, Southwest strives for 3.5, according to LaPorte.

He said Southwest, which doesn’t charge for checked luggage, typically carries more bags per traveler than its fee-charging competitors.

The ramp

Southwest is famous for its quick “turns,” flights that arrive, empty out travelers and luggage, and then quickly reload, refuel and depart.

“How do we do 25-minute turns? It starts nine months out with proper staffing, equipment and facilities,” LaPorte said of the long-range planning.

Southwest ramp agents like Raymond Seiberlich, Van Cooper and Tyler Martin help carry out the plan.

At gate C-34, flight 414 from Nashville has just pulled in.

Carts already are staged in the gate area with bags to be loaded on the plane for its departure to Sacramento.

The workers line up belt loaders at the forward and aft cargo holds of the jet.

Seiberlich climbs into the forward bin and starts loading luggage and freight on the belt. Cooper, sweat glistening on his bald head, works outside the plane, taking bags off the belt and tossing them on carts, separating those destined for the terminal from transfers.

“Ramp agents are the hardest- working people at Southwest,” says ground operations supervisor Tim Stawski.

In total, the airline employs about 500 people at DIA and will be hiring another 60 to 70 in coming months.

“We hire for attitude and train for aptitude,” Stawski said, adding that Southwest looks for employees with a “fun-loving” attitude and a “servant’s heart.”

At 4:10 p.m., Martin, in a tractor, pushes flight 414 from the gate, 31 minutes after it arrived.

The ticket counter

At Southwest’s check-in counter in the terminal, it uses other metrics.

The airline wants passengers in the area 1 1/2 hours before departure and travelers should expect to wait in line an average of about 10 minutes before they get to a kiosk, said Michele Benze, assistant station manager for customer service at DIA.

No line means the carrier may be overstaffed behind the counter, yet if the wait-time stretches beyond 20 minutes, it’s too long, Benze said.

The goal is to have travelers avoid “lobby shock” — a condition that sets in, she said, when a passenger enters a ticket lobby, sees a long line, and thinks “Oh, my gosh, I’m going to miss my flight.”

To help speed the flow, Southwest recently installed Express Bag Drop kiosks that read a bar code on a preprinted boarding pass and eliminate the need for passengers to type in travel information.

The express kiosks have shaved a minute off each check-in transaction, LaPorte said.

“It’s made a huge difference in our line times,” he said.

Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com