Is SuperTug classified under Ramp or Maintenance at AA?

dawgsfan

Newbie
Jul 19, 2009
2
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This is what they are called at Delta and are under the ramp. I know they are referred to as MTE (Move Team Employees) at United and that all moves at Southwest are done by Maintenance unless an extreme situation arises where the Ramp Supervisors are allowed to brake ride in that instance. If you could also tell me if you receive some type of override that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help.
 
Maintenance handles all Goldhofer moves at AA. Even then, we don't do that many at DFW because the Goldhofers are unreliable at best. They work very well as yard tractors around the hangar though.
 
At my station AA AMTs do all of the moves from hangar to terminal, primarily Goldhofer. The LUS side has their ramp do the Goldhofer moves. At AA, we don't get any extra pay for Goldhofer or Taxiing aircraft.
 
At ORD, UAL was trying to get the city to allow ramp to do all the super tug moves, but the city wants mechs. I know in CRT before Eagle ramp agents were pulled from there, that the Eagle ramp agents would run the APU, brake ride, talk on the radios, and tow AA main line jets on the taxi ways.

Our tech CC instructors train a lot of out station FSCs to do all that stuff. Towing a plane doesn't require an A&P, but our only saving grace is we do it safer (most of the time)
 
At ORD, UAL was trying to get the city to allow ramp to do all the super tug moves, but the city wants mechs. I know in CRT before Eagle ramp agents were pulled from there, that the Eagle ramp agents would run the APU, brake ride, talk on the radios, and tow AA main line jets on the taxi ways.

Our tech CC instructors train a lot of out station FSCs to do all that stuff. Towing a plane doesn't require an A&P, but our only saving grace is we do it safer (most of the time)


Maintenance doesn't need to be giving up anymore work to fleet service.
 
We've always done it (Ramp) on the sCO side of the house before the merger. Years ago, we've move planes from gate to gate, instead of waiting for MX. Most guys learned how to "ride the brake"; push; and know the OPS/Tower frequencies, so it progressed to creating a MTE team. I have enough seniority to transfer to MTE, but you lose some freedoms like since the group is smaller, your choices for trading or vacations can be somewhat limited due to the smaller, restricted pool. Once the merger happened, the IAM wanted to, and fought to keep the positions, and migrate the choice to the sUA stations and hubs. I know at my hub, they have a great safety record. The problem has been other airline ground crews or vendors hitting our planes! About a couple of years ago, management wanted to create an APU Team, which MX protested (IIRC). I think that idea was abandoned.
 
Maintenance doesn't need to be giving up anymore work to fleet service.
Why not? Fleet gave up work to the mechanics. That is why there are no more Fleet Service Clerks at TULE.

:)

I am just yanking your chain. You are right you need to maintain your job functions.