Hawaiian Airlines ramp agent Darryl Jones has seen all types of personal items during his four years at the company, but one day an unusual article caught his attention.

"Unpackaged antlers," he said. "Someone went hunting on one of the neighbor islands, got antlers and shipped them back, and they’re not even in bubble wrap. It’s just kind of taped together. You know that this is their trophy and they don’t want it to be damaged. So we have to be very, very careful with something like that."

Such is the life of a ramp agent, more commonly known as a baggage handler. Expect anything to be shipped, but make sure it gets to where it’s going on time.

Though Jones, 59, embraces the job and the camaraderie, airlines were far from his mind in 2008, when he was working as a life insurance agent and his division closed down. After that, Jones did financial planning for the same company. But when his son went off to college in Phoenix in August 2011, Jones said, he needed to figure out a way he and his wife could get to the mainland to see their son and for their son to be able to get home.

"I heard about the airline industry," he said. "I live in Hawaii so I figured I’d try Hawaiian Airlines and I got lucky. (Free) flying is one of our benefits."

Now Jones is putting his communication skills, learned in the financial world, to work making sure bags don’t get lost.

"Communication is the single biggest thing that helps make us successful in that area," Jones said. "Everybody’s got a schedule, so we know what time the plane needs to leave. If we have our hands on the bag, then we’ve got several points of communication to try to get the message to the loaders to actually take the bags out to the plane to be able to load it on time."

The main reason a bag misses a flight is because it’s being transferred from a late-arriving aircraft, Jones said.

"For connecting bags, we are allowed an hour for trans-Pacific operations and a half-hour for interisland operations," Jones said. "If a bag misses its connecting flight due to connecting airlines failing to transfer the bag to Hawaiian within the allowed time, we can communicate to management and ask if we can hold the flight to load the bag. Or if the flight has already left, or if it’s closed or pushing back, then we take it to the baggage service office and a baggage service agent handles it from that point to get it to the destination as soon as possible. To ensure the passenger gets their bag as soon as possible, we’ll put it on the next flight even if it’s with another airline."

As for getting bags from the passenger to the plane at the point of origin, Hawaiian became the first airline in the U.S. in March 2013 to provide self-service check-in.

Nowadays, a departing passenger takes the bag to a self-tag kiosk that has a scale. The passenger enters reservation information into the kiosk and the passenger’s boarding pass is dispensed with a luggage tag to be placed on the bag. The passenger then brings the bag to the agricultural inspection screening machine (unless the flight is interisland) and personnel there put it through. Once cleared, it continues through a maze of belt systems that takes it down through the Transportation Security Administration screening rooms and into the bag room.

That’s where Jones’ job begins. He or a colleague will read the tag and put the bag on an open cart if it’s going interisland so it can be placed in the belly of a Boeing 717 aircraft. If it’s a mainland or international flight, the bag is put inside an enclosed ULD (unit load device) container. These containers fit in the cargo holds of the long-haul Boeing 767s and Airbus A330s, but are too large to fit in the smaller Boeing 717s.

He said the biggest challenges for ramp agents are late, oversized and heavy bags.

"If … we don’t have any tub (ground-service equipment) drivers that can take it out, we get (late bags) out there anyway we can," Jones said. "I’ve carried bags out a couple of gates from the bag room many a time. It can be a 70-pound bag with no wheels."

Sometimes it’s not a late-arriving flight but the belt that is the culprit.

"When we have a malfunctioning belt, then we’ve got to make sure we get those bags loaded into the cans onto the aircraft, and we have to have the TSA come down with the actual canines to actually sniff them, as opposed to them going through the machines," Jones said.

And sometimes it’s the bag itself that is to blame.

"If something breaks or falls out … we let our lead ramp agents know and then they will come over and will handle putting the items back into the bag," Jones said. "If it’s a broken zipper, we’ve got the oversize rubbish bags that we’ll go ahead and put everything in there so that if we can’t put everything back in the original container, then at least everything that came with that bag is still there."

Passengers ship all types of items and not all fit neatly into a suitcase. There are surfboards, bicycles, construction equipment, toys, computers, televisions, all types of electronics, food and pets.

"And because of the culture here in Hawaii, when they’re going to have a graduation or things like that, one island, or one particular area, they have different types of ti leaves," Jones said.

Electric wheelchairs pose another challenge.

"You’ve got the battery to deal with, you’ve got the size and the weight," Jones said. "The later models seem to be a little bit lighter in weight overall, including the batteries, but some of the older chairs are a bit bulky. We’ve got some 200-pound chairs."

Jones said it’s helpful, but not necessary, for a baggage handler to have a background of working out in the gym.

"You do learn a technique that will make it a little bit easier to be able to transfer bags from the belt to the cart," he said "But it wouldn’t hurt to be reasonably in shape."