American Airlines Flight 27 was hundreds of miles out to sea on its way from Los Angeles to Tokyo this month when a passenger had a medical emergency.
The flight’s captain called Mike Doran, a dispatcher for the airline in Texas. Mr. Doran connected him to a doctor employed by American. After that consultation, the pilot changed course, flying more than two hours to San Francisco, so the passenger could get help.
As the plane made its way, Mr. Doran and his colleagues turned their attention to all the problems that would result from that diversion. The crew would need a break. Passengers would have to be provided accommodations. The plane would have to get new meals. And other flights scheduled on that plane would require reassignment.
Dealing with such messes is routine at the center where Mr. Doran and hundreds of others manage the far-flung operations of the world’s largest airline. Hubs like this play a central role in the aviation system. But unlike airport security officers or air traffic controllers, whose travails in the United States have drawn a lot of attention recently, what happens in such airline nerve centers is largely invisible to most people.
Even small disruptions can have severe effects on an airline’s planes, employees and customers. Companies make meticulous plans and have backup planes, parts and pilots to put to use when something goes wrong, which can happen during the frenzied days around holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas and in the winter when storms can paralyze airports across the country.
But for that preparation to be effective it has to be deployed with care and skill. “These operation control centers are there to make the best possible use of resources,” said Michael Boyd, a consultant with the Boyd Group International, a firm that specializes in aviation.
American’s Integrated Operations Center is at the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth, a short drive from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Most of the operational work is carried out on the carpeted second floor of the building, which is designed to withstand tornadoes with gusts of up to 165 miles an hour. Employees sit in front of banks of screens, monitoring flight schedules, mechanical problems, bad weather, runway closures, geopolitics and more.
Noise-canceling technology embedded in the ceiling and walls makes the space calm and quiet. The stakes, after all, are significant. American transports more than 600,000 passengers a day by deploying a small army of pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, check-in agents and others to more than 350 airports around the globe.
“We have plenty of days where we complete all of our flights, but even on those days we’ve had to fix a lot of things to make that happen,” said Jessica Tyler, who oversees that work as the vice president of the operations center.
The center’s work is all the more important because American is trying to catch up financially to the two other full-service U.S. airlines that are its biggest rivals — Delta Air Lines and United Airlines. Since 2022, those two airlines have accounted for most of the U.S. airline industry’s profits.
Profits and ticket sales are closely linked to how well an airline gets passengers where they are going as efficiently and painlessly as possible. And American has room to improve. In the first nine months of the year, about 72 percent of American’s flights arrived on time or close to it, compared with 77 percent for United and 79 percent for Delta, according to federal data. Over that same period, American canceled about 2 percent of its flights, while Delta and United each canceled less than 1 percent.
About 1,700 people work at American’s operations center — it is staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year — including dispatchers who handle flight planning, crew schedulers who manage pilots and flight attendants, maintenance controllers who monitor the health of the planes, meteorologists, technology specialists and security experts.
Most days, several hundred people are managing operations from the second floor, with much of the work divided among 11 teams, organized by airplane type, geography or both.
Ricardo Eva handles operations for the group that manages all flights involving Airbus A321 planes flying into or out of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, a big American hub. On Dec. 4, the day after the Tokyo flight was diverted to San Francisco, 124 of the Airbus jets were scheduled to fly.
Late that morning, Mr. Eva received a call about another medical emergency, this one on Flight 2535. The plane had left its gate in San Diego, but was returning to release a passenger with the medical emergency.
Mr. Eva hung up and immediately called over his shoulder to Jennifer Irwin, who was nearby and handling customer service for the unit: “Jennifer, 2-5-3-5 went back to the gate for medical in San Diego,” he said.
Each member started to take charge of his or her area of focus. Ms. Irwin contacted workers on the ground. Phil Stam, the crew coordinator, checked if the flight attendants would be able to make their next flight. And Betty Hernandez, who handles aircraft availability for the unit, made sure that a backup jet was ready, if needed. “It’s like playing Tetris on top of Jenga,” she said.
This time, things went smoothly. The passenger who was unwell got off the plane and was rebooked on another flight. The original flight arrived in Dallas less than an hour late. The rest of the day was calm. Out of more than 6,500 American Airlines flights scheduled on Dec. 4, just 13 were canceled.
Scrapping a flight is typically a last resort because cancellations can affect other flights, crews, planes and maintenance, said David Seymour, American’s chief operating officer.
“It’s a system focus,” he said. “Keep the system whole as much as you can.”
The operations center coordinates with people and organizations outside American, too. A group of employees are in regular touch with Air Traffic Control, a part of the Federal Aviation Administration. When the agency restricted flights into some airports in November during the federal government shutdown, the airline worked with F.A.A. officials to figure out how best to minimize disruptions.
American is also in regular touch with its partner airlines, who may help resolve problems in a pinch, and cruise lines that carry travelers with connecting flights.
When flights must be canceled, digital tools may prevent cascading problems. One can automatically reassign about 75 percent of passengers to a new flight within 12 minutes, according to Ms. Tyler.
But some disruptions require more creativity. A day after Thanksgiving, the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus announced that thousands of its planes, which included several hundred operated by American, needed an urgent software update.
American started swapping Airbus planes for Boeing ones, rebooking customers using its digital tools and scheduling technicians to provide the updates.
But the command center was getting so many calls from pilots that it had to set up a hotline to get information out. It was hectic, but American updated all of the affected planes ahead of a deadline set by European regulators, who have primary responsibility for Airbus jets.
Fortunately, there were few disruptions the next week, when the command center staff fielded the medical emergencies over the ocean and in San Diego.
“People are coming to us to go on vacation, to go to a funeral, to go to a wedding, to go to a cruise. You’re making memories,” Mr. Doran said. “It’s a challenge, but the reward at the end of the day is you moved a lot of people.”
Niraj Chokshi is a Times reporter who writes about aviation, rail and other transportation industries.
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