Feature -- by Berenice Gargus

Jeanne Gearey, Gearey's Aircraft Services.

Could you imagine if you boarded a plane to the sight of garbage in the aisles and the smell of nasty food odours? No doubt you'd have serious concerns about what other parts of the aircraft hadn't been maintained.

Gearey's Aircraft Services works around the clock to make sure your next flight is spic-and-span. The staff of around 50 employees clean and groom planes for WestJet, Northwest, Continental, Canadian North and United.

Jeanne and Wayne Gearey started the company 24 years ago and it's gradually become a family affair, with their son and daughters hard at work doing cleaning, administration and managing the cargo side of the company's aircraft services.

Gearey's was small until about seven years ago, but now business has really taken off. And more business means a need for more staff. As does the high turnover rate of people who try it and decide the work isn't right for them.

"No one wants to work nights," Jeanne says from her cozy office just South of the main airport terminal. She explains that most of the cleaning is done in the wee hours, with shifts starting at nine PM and ending at five or six AM. But even with four crews of three people each needed around the clock, it's hard to get into the prime slots. "There's no turnover for the day shift at all," Jeanne adds. "No one can even make a break into that."

Depending on the cleaner's skill and speed, personnel will be stationed either in the slower detailing work or the intense, five- to seven-minute turnarounds on passenger active planes, also called gate grooms.

"A 737 200 plane [seating 125] should take three people about an hour and fifteen minutes," she says. For an "F28 [seating 60], maybe two people who take half an hour. Then you have your jumbos. They're the fun ones where you put 12 people on to do a turn and they're done in an hour." No doubt a plane that seats up to 500 has a lot of areas to wipe, vacuum and restock.

Something to think about next time you're waiting in the pre-boarding area for what feels like forever.

WestJet alone sends Gearey's up to 15 planes a night, so resumes are welcome all the time. No experience is necessary but you do have to present a clean police report and leave your fingerprints at the door before you suit up and set foot on tarmac.

If you demonstrate you're still serious about the job after a trial period, Gearey's will run you through a full-scale security clearance with the Airport Authority, and only then will you be able to work without constant supervision. Security is intense at all times.

"If it wasn't, I wouldn't want to work here. For our sake as well as everyone else's," Jeanne says, patting an etched glass cube on her desk that memorializes the 9-11 tragedy.

The work itself is in line with a regular commercial cleaning service: they vacuum rugs, clean washrooms, scrub down walls, vacuum out vents. "We clean from stem to stern on an aircraft," Jeanne says. "The only thing we don't detail is the cockpit." For insurance purposes, specialists do that.

Gearey's handles both airplane cleaning and grooming. Cleaning is like sprucing up your room for that special someone, while grooming is about tearing the place apart and starting from scratch.

Detailing takes more time and energy but must be done regularly to keep down moisture and rot - airplanes have ice boxes instead of refrigerators, so things can get ugly if water or damp trash is allowed to sit. Seat cushions are also stripped for cleaning, so there's no point digging around for loose change the next time you're headed up up and away.

Some groomers have been at Gearey's for 10 or more years and are now team leaders, supervisors or even night managers. Wages start at $8/hr and can go as high as $17/hr for supervisors. Currently, all positions include medical benefits after 6 months, which is nothing to sniff at in the cleaning industry.

"I've got a Bachelor of Science and I never thought I'd be working in an airport," Jeanne says. "It's a job that fits a certain type of person. If you have a degree, you might get bored after a while."

But if you love to clean and don't mind the night shift, it's an exciting environment. There's the intrigue of being in high security areas and handling sudden spikes in the workload or objects passengers have left behind.

While Jeanne wouldn't name the really ugly stuff except to ask "Why can't women with babies use the lav[atory] trash?", she did list forgotten gift items, personal effects and the occasional many-legged hitchhiker from across the border.

Lost property is tagged and taken to the airline. A cockroach sighting will mean a professional full-plane fumigation.

"It's exciting work," Jeanne says, "and it's hard too in some instances because if it's a blizzard you still have to go out and clean." Or if a plane touches down carrying an airsick passenger, "you have to clean that up."

According to Jeanne, Canada Labour considers airport work high accident risk but Gearey's hasn't experienced anything more serious than an employee getting her fingertip caught in an automatic jet-way door. (A jet-way is the mobile corridor that allows people to move from the terminal to the plane.)

The only job hazards Jeanne can imagine are "if someone closed the doors on an aircraft and the APU was running -- it sucks out all the air", or if access stairs were not properly secured to the craft and the groomer was in too much of a hurry. "But everyone who works around aircraft are really well trained," she says.

Chemical exposure hazards are also said to be minimal but repetitive motion injuries are inevitable. "Eventually it does take its toll. I've got a wrecked shoulder," Jeanne says, citing 10 years of rubbing and scrubbing as the cause. "My daughter does too." Bad knees and wrists are common, but generally only in those who've been at it for years.

Even so, Jeanne will still snap on the gloves herself if they suddenly find themselves at staff capacity when an extra plane or two comes in.

Like Jeanne and her family, the people who have been with Gearey's for 5 to 17 years have obviously found it rewarding work to keep it clean out there on the tarmac.

Related info:

Westjet Handling Agents (see Gearey's Aircraft Services)