Delta Air Lines to Build Heavy Maintenance Facility in Queretaro, Mexico

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thanks for your responses, Dawg.

You are absolutely right that DL couldn't find the revenue to replace the insourcing revenue it gets... and they couldn't find places to do the jobs you do for the same amount - including the cost of laying Tech Ops employees off and shutting the place down - so they keep Tech Ops jobs.

It's about money. DL is a business, not a charity. You and others do a job for them and get a paycheck.

Other airlines have chosen to keep LESS work in house - send more work out. DL has a formula that keeps more work for DL employees than other airlines, and DL is able to do it at comparable or lower costs than its peers who outsource more.
DL's insourcing work - not just in Tech Ops provides the mass the airline needs to remain efficient. Whether it is engine overhauls for Gol or shutting Comair in order to shift flying to DL employees, DL insources because it makes mainline more efficient.

Yes, I know you want to focus solely on overhaul because that is apparently YOUR THING. But DL is not just overhaul. They aren't just a domestic airline. As such, they have the ability to shift assets where they can make the most money. They stopped flying to Cairo because tourists don't want to go there anywhere... no money to be made. They don't do airframe overhauls - in part - because they can't make money at those costs.

But they can make money doing engine overhauls. And they can and do form partnerships with AM for maintenance just like they do with AF/KL for passenger revenue - because both sides gain.

Kev,
you may want to label flexbility as autocracy but it is exactly what DL has been able to use to keep more work for DL employees. Pilots gave the company the flexibility to turn a bunch of 50 seaters into beer cans but buy used 717s and add'l 76 seaters, with the result that DL employees will work more under the reworked fleet plan than they do now.

You, from your union viewpoint, see flexibility as taking jobs away... yet the overwhelming evidence is that DL's ability to adapt to the marketplace is what has allowed them to keep more jobs than other airlines. It was true during the bankruptcies, it is still true today.

DL employees are a member of the marketplace for airline labor. Their benefits and scope are being eroded by other airlines who trash union contracts in BK. DL only has to do better than those airlines to convince its employees that a union won't provide the security or pay the unions promise. DL employees fare better than their unionized peers because those heavily unionized airlines have had open season on airline labor for 35 years of deregulation.

Other airlines are laying off employees... and you can't accept that moving jobs from within the company is a better alternative. That is the flexibility DL has to use... flexible staffing including RRs are what DL can do today to keep its FT employees on the payroll. Unions won't ever agree such a solution is viable - yet you can't stop the wholesale trashing of airline labor contracts in BK and the outsourcing of work by other airlines which is far larger.

You are an idealist, Kev. I admire you for that. I admire you for fighting for what matters to you and for never giving up in the things that you believe are right. Sometimes, flexibility and pragmatism are needed in order to build a world that isn't everything you want but a whole lot better than the alternative.

A political commentator offered this about the current political situation in the US, noting there is alot of idealism at work with little ability to make goals happen.

"The presidents judged by history to be the greatest — Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Washington, Jefferson, Reagan and Wilson — were all idealists. They had a vision of America and of the world. But these men were also pragmatic politicians, men who judged that winning what’s possible is preferable to losing in fealty to an impossible dream.
In their time, each of them was denounced by their closest supporters for betraying their ideals. But they changed America."


The world will be changed not by those who hold rigidly to ideals which cannot be attained but by those who figure out how to succeed in a world that is less than what it should be but still provides considerable opportunity to those of us as change agents who pragmatically accept the world as it is and build a better world one brick at a time.
 
The world will be changed not by those who hold rigidly to ideals which cannot be attained but by those who figure out how to succeed in a world that is less than what it should be but still provides considerable opportunity to those of us as change agents who pragmatically accept the world as it is and build a better world one brick at a time.

... Nor will it be effectively changed for the better by people who shrug their shoulders, give up, then spend tons of time trying to rationalize it...
 
The nfl refs are scabs. Do you support scabs?
What kind of an idiot are you? What the hell indication did you ever get from me in regarding scabs? Does any of this discussion have anything to do striking workers?
Please try to follow the topic before posting next time.
Then you bring the NFL into it, are the refs from Mexico?
 
... Nor will it be effectively changed for the better by people who shrug their shoulders, give up, then spend tons of time trying to rationalize it...
And who is shrugging their shoulders? Who is rationalizing anything?

I certainly haven't given up my belief that more jobs can be brought back to the US - that airline employees can end the cyclical, downward spiral that has destroyed salaries for most of deregulation.

But in order to be REALLY objective, you have to ask yourself what works and what doesn't.

Despite the immense loyalty that you and others on this board have to the union cause, the simple reality is that unionization HAS NOT resulted in a better outcome than other alternatives - and among US network airlines, DL's employee-mgmt model has resulted in fewer job losses and average or better compensation - and a far better working relationship that has allowed DL to grow while other airlines have continued to shrink and take jobs from their mainline employees.

Once again, DL is insourcing work from outside the US and from US airlines that do not have the capabilities that DL possesses and DL is making money doing it.
DL is shifting flying away from its contract regional carriers to its own mainline employees.

I understand your idealism and your desire to push your cause... if the goal is to preserve jobs and increase pay, then the question honestly must be asked what strategy does that better.

And if there is another alternative that is working better than the heavily unionized airline model, then rethinking the MEANS by which one achieves those goals has to be in order.

That doesn't mean accepting ANY strategy as ideal or without need for improvement.
 
Translation: Corproate profit(s) justify any action or behavior, no matter the consequences to people or the nation as a whole.
absolutely not.

If one strategy works and another doesn't at producing the results that were intended, then objectivity says that you have to consider the merits of the working strategy, even if it is contrary to one's view point.

If the goal is more jobs and higher pay, then that is the metric that has to be evaluated....
 
Why didn't DL gut the entire maintenance system during Chpt 11? You can say higher valve work stayed in house, Yea that is the sound bite. The truth is they couldn't find anyone at the time that could promise the PSV work on the time frame they wanted. Everyone wanted more time to do the checks. A prime example is the NW fleet which is still mostly done at MRO's. An L check on a 757 takes 11 days. We just did one in ATL. We turned the aircraft in seven days, under budget. Another is in the dock in the TOC. I think the turn times on the Airbus are also down for the ones done at the TOC. We are going to be doing another line of them next year while there is slack in the 737 line.
 
what a capitalistic answer, 88.

Reinforces completely why I've said that DL people can do the job as good as other providers... that is why the work remains in-house.

Sounds like the TOC remains busy and when DL mechanics have slack in their schedule, the work stays in-house rather than going out.

My faith in your ability to win in the marketplace is unshaken.

Kevin,
I look forward to the day when we can sit down together and understand each other. I truly do.
Success is my only goal. The route to get there is largely immaterial.
 
At the demise of whatever gets in your way. I was just reading your posts over on the AA thread and you rail against them as much as glow for Delta.

It is almost creepy.

Indeed it is, and we can only wonder how he links his success to Delta's........
 
yes, but he is VERY shy.

In contrast to his very DIRECT, no-holds-barred cousin WT, Spectator is a wallflower.

Not sure what he wanted to say but he apparently didn't want to rock the boat and quickly shut down. God love him.

I think the two have talked and Spectator has concluded that WT enjoys his mental sparring matches here on this website. Spectator thinks that WT comes here to be the unbuttoned, rowdy son-of-a-gun he never was anywhere else.

Spectator is no dummy or pushover - just one of those silent ones.

Wanna guess how long we'll have to wait for post #2?
 
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