"Old School" Dispatching

If you're an aircraft dispatcher nowdays, you probably use all the latest in dispatching software and tracking devices to make your job easier. Well, where I work at, since we're a small outfit, we don't need to use all the high speed, high tech gadgets that the bigger airlines use. Sure we have computer's and we've designed our own programs to make our releases and figure weights and burns out, but what I really like about how we do things is we interact with the crews. Every morning, crew arrive in dispatch and we give them a briefing and discuss things person to person. Makes for better dispatch resource management.

So here the dispatcher station. Briefing counter to the right and a great view (when the aircraft is not parked there) of HNL/PHNL and RWY 4R/22L

A little closer look shows the important stuff like ICED COFFFEE!!!

If I didn't have one of these in the morning, I'd be dead in the water!

 Up on the far left screen screen we have weather-

satellite loops and printed weather reports, on the center screen
releases and fuel slips and more weather via Pilot Brief on the far right.

Here's what the release look like. Three copies printed ot per crew. Our releases are are done for the whole trip line and are amended as necessary during the days ops. New release are faxed out to crews (No ACARS system here)

Flights throughout the day are tracked via the GANTT. Alot of airlines use a computer based system to track flights, but since we have a smaller ops this works just as great. Since the islands are within a 30 minute flight time (the exception being the Big Island of Hawaii) we can contact the aircraft via the base radio (air to ground) or if further out, via AIRCELL.