L.A. STORIES: A slice of life in Southern California : Terminal Power: Those With <i> Real</i> Pull at LAX

If anyone in this town could push around Mike Ovitz, it might be Ray Kohler.

When Kohler talks, the behemoths of show biz listen, even the agent uber alles --or else they’d miss their plane. Because Kohler knows all when it comes to departure times, a key ingredient in his main mission--getting you to New York on time. The dapper professional airport meeter and greeter does the deed with all the grace of a maitre d’ but with the added je ne sais quoi of a drill sergeant.

So when your limo pulls up to the curb and Kohler says you’d better move, then you’d better move:

“They’re in the car, you open the door, they’re on the phone, you close the door, you finally knock on the door and tell them, ‘You know, we really have to go.’ They’ll tell you, ‘One more call.’ And since we know our business out here, we turn around and just tell them, ‘It’s now or you’re not going,’ and you’re talking to the president or something of a studio.

“They know us enough that they say, ‘OK, I gotta go. Ray says.’ ”

What Ray says, goes. As head of airport special services for Hoffman Travel, which caters to the entertainment industry, Kohler, 49, marshals the largest fleet of resident meeters and greeters at LAX--14 people--and an additional seven in New York. His co-captain is Junko (JUNE-ko) Okamura, a bubbly woman who helps pilot the L.A. crew.

This is the ultimate handmaiden job pampering an industry that very much wants its hand held, not to mention its bags. Its practitioners meet you curbside and check you in, check your flight, check your bags, check your luggage tags and whisk you to the first-class lounge for a bit of private waiting. When your flight is called, your meeter returns to deposit you at the gate and, if necessary, collars airline personnel to show you to your seat.

“The whole idea,” says Kohler, “is they’re not supposed to have to think.”

Which certainly would have come in handy for one of Okamuro’s clients, who appeared in her line of sight draped over the back of an electric cart.

“I think, ‘I’m in trouble,’ ” she recalls. “ ‘This guy’s either drunk or he’s sick. How am I going to get him on the airplane?’ Then the cart driver gets off the cart, picks him up by the neck and the hip and drops him on the floor.

“It turns out to be a life-size dummy,” who, it turned out, was flying around the country promoting the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s,” named for a deceased insurance exec.

More typical are the actually breathing execs who form the bulk of Hoffman’s clientele, which also embraces airborne celebrities like Danny DeVito, Dolly Parton and Bette Midler. If the travelers are top execs, chances are they’re making deals and taking meetings until the last possible minute, their usual airport arrival time. But not to worry. Ray and Junko, as they’re known around LAX, will run to the gate and make sure no one else snags your first-class power seat.

You know, the power seats, the clumps by the window in Rows 2 or 3 where you can see the movie and be seen. And heaven help you if end up in the rear of first class.

“There are beautiful seats in first class and there are junk seats in first class,” Kohler says. “There’s a stigma to being too far back--too close to coach.”

But fear not. If the computer can’t get you a power seat and the flight is full, then you can always resort to truly high technology--the power of schmooze.

Ray and Junko’s secret weapon is a highly cultivated web of personal contacts at LAX, which allows them to tread where computers have not gone before. Indeed, when they clock their many miles on foot around the airport, they are greeted themselves by Skycaps and reservations agents, as if they were mayors of a small city.

“This is a PR game,” says the personable Ray. “This is not who Hoffman is, or how much business Hoffman gives. This is strictly a personality game. If they like you, they do for you.”

So they’ll give Ray and Junko seats the airline has reserved for booking at flight time. Or they’ll turn over seats surrendered by no-shows minutes before takeoff.

What Ray and Junko can’t do is unseat someone who’s sitting in a catbird power seat. “Although some of our clients have gone up and asked them, ‘I think you’re in my seat,’ ” Ray says. “And then they look at the person, and if it’s a star, they might move, but most people in 2 or 3 won’t move.”

But the piece de resistance of the meeting and greeting experience happens when flights are scrubbed. “Eighty-seven percent of your meets are curb, club and right onto the airplane,” Ray says. “The rest are flights that are canceled or problems that arise . . . That’s when we really shine, when the airlines fall down.”

Last week, Ray met an exec at the curb, and in the five minutes it took to escort him to the gate, the airline announced that his flight to Denver was delayed--the last flight that connected with another to Telluride, the client’s destination. Ray whipped out his portable phone and quickly rerouted him by another airline, destination and van service, although the first airline ended up flying a bit late after all.

“All hell broke loose,” Ray says. “If you’re the traveler, all you need is one of those days and you’ll swear by being met.”

Ralph Peterson, Warner Bros. executive vice president, is among the high fliers who do. “If something goes wrong with the plane, and you’ve got to get your flight changed, they can do it for you,” he says. “If you try to get it changed yourself, you wind up in coach.”

Ray and Junko also meet Japanese businessmen, another art in etiquette. They offer tea and acknowledge the execs’ rarefied positions in card-reading ceremonies. Junko never walks ahead of execs, abiding by Japanese gender protocol. But then, she also never walks behind them, as tradition might dictate.

Then “he won’t know where he’s supposed to go,” she notes.

This service is free to top execs and stars of client companies like 20th Century Fox, Amblin Entertainment and Universal, whose trips help bankroll Hoffman’s $100 million-a-year business. Ray and Junko, airline employees in earlier incarnations, have been escorting them for a decade or so. The crew ushers through 50 people a day.

All that experience as well as pure gumption have enabled them to arrange for massages between connecting flights and scare up infant formula and French water mere minutes before takeoff. They’ve even been known to arrange for an exec to fly first class with his wife-- and his girlfriend stowed discreetly in coach.

But even Ray and Junko have their limits. If you miss your flight, you miss your flight.

“Contrary to what people believe,” Ray says, “airlines will not hold airplanes.”

So when your limo pulls up to the curb and you’re still on the phone, you would do well to get out when Ray opens the door.

“My line is always, ‘I have good news and bad news. In a minute, you’re going to have all the time in the world to make all kinds of telephone calls because you’re going to be sitting for three hours waiting for the next flight to New York.’

“They go, ‘What? ‘ It breaks them. ‘All right, I gotta go.’ And we all run.”