Airport runs, captured with the flight.
The flight details come in on the call, not in a callback. AVA takes the flight number, the airline and the terminal while the caller is still on the line, and your dispatcher confirms the pickup.
Four details that decide the whole run.
An airport run turns on facts a caller rattles off in about ten seconds. AVA asks for every one of them while the caller is still on the phone, and they come back in the same fields on every ticket. Your dispatcher never opens two tickets that are laid out differently. Here is what each field does on a run sheet.
Flight number
One short string that identifies the whole trip. A dispatcher holding it can go look up anything else the run needs. Without it, the desk is calling the passenger back to ask a question the caller already answered once.
Airline
The airline tells your dispatcher which side of the field the car belongs on. Big airports split carriers across separate terminals, and the wrong side is a driver circling with a passenger already standing at a curb.
Terminal
Where the car actually stops. On a departure that is a curb. On an arrival it is a door, a garage level, or a meet point inside. AVA asks the caller which one, and it lands in its own field instead of a note nobody reads.
Departure time
The anchor. Every other time on the run sheet is counted backward from it: the pickup, the driver's start, the deadhead over. On an arrival the landing time does the same job, and the meet runs forward from there.
The buffer gets written down. Your desk signs it off.
Every operator has a rule about how early a car shows up for a flight. Some shops want two hours on a domestic departure, more on an international one, more again when the weather turns. That rule is yours. You built it out of your service area, your drivers and your own Monday mornings. It does not belong to an answering service.
So AVA does not do the arithmetic. It asks what time the flight goes and what time the caller wants the car. Both numbers go on the ticket in their own fields, and the buffer is marked for review. If the gap looks tight, the ticket carries a flag. A flag is not a correction.
Your dispatcher reads the two numbers, applies your rule, and sets the time. That is the only place the pickup time is ever decided. Your rule is written down during setup, before the line goes live.
MKE, MSN, ORD, MDW and whatever yours is.
Most Wisconsin work funnels through four fields: the two at home, and the two in Chicago that operators drive down for. AVA takes all of them the same way. Run somewhere else and it takes yours the same way too, because the airport is a value on the ticket, not a special case in the build.
Before the airport matters, though, two things separate an airport run from every other trip on the board. AVA asks about both of them on the call.
The first is where the car sits. A departure is a curb: the driver pulls to the airline's door and the bags go in. An arrival is a choice. Curbside means the passenger walks out and the car is rolling in a minute. Baggage claim means the driver parks, walks in, and stands there with a sign until the bags come around. Those are two different jobs and two very different amounts of driver time, and the caller is the only person who knows which one they want.
The second is domestic against international. A domestic arrival walks off and out. An international one clears customs first, and the meet happens on the far side of it, in a hall the driver has to already be standing in. AVA puts the arrival type on the ticket so your dispatcher is not guessing how long that driver is committed for.
MKE · Milwaukee
General Mitchell International. The home field for most Milwaukee black car work. AVA takes the airline and the terminal on the way in, so the ticket already says which side of the building the car goes to. More on the Milwaukee limo answering service.
MSN · Madison
Dane County Regional. A smaller field, an identical ticket. A Madison run and a Milwaukee run come back in the same shape and the same order, so nobody at the desk is reading two formats before sunrise. More on the Madison limo answering service.
ORD · Chicago
O'Hare. Carriers sit across separate terminals here, so the airline and the terminal do real work on this ticket. International arrivals also meet somewhere different than domestic ones, and the ticket says which kind it is.
MDW · Chicago
Midway. One terminal, so the airline carries more of the load than the terminal does. Same fields, same ticket, and the same buffer question left open for your desk to answer.
Nobody is at the desk when the 5 AM run calls.
The earliest departure bank rolls before most offices unlock. So the call that sets one up lands with nobody near the phone. Late the night before, or at four in the morning, when a passenger wakes up and realizes there is no car coming.
That caller is not leaving a message. A flight is a deadline, and a deadline does not wait for a callback. They hang up and dial the next name on the map, and you never find out the trip existed.
AVA is on the line at 4 AM the same as at 2 PM. Every call answered at once, first ring, no hold and no queue. The caller gives the flight, the terminal, the pickup they want, and AVA reads it back before the call ends. By the time your dispatcher sits down, the run is already written out and waiting on a human.
That is the whole job. The office was dark, the phone rang once, and the ride was captured. Call the line and hear one →
Give AVA a flight. Hear what it asks next.
The only honest way to judge an intake line is to be the caller. Dial the number and give AVA an airport run: a flight number, a terminal, a pickup you would actually take. Then listen to the questions. Nothing to install, no menu to sit through.
