Yet DL outsources most of their overhaul.
And the latest AMT hires are not DL employees but DGS.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
But as usual, you can't admit the truth because DL Tech Ops employees have chosen to not inject unions into their strategy.
According to the most recent data from the DOT, DL outsources less than 40% of its total maintenance spend.... but then turns around and insources the equivalent of 25% of its maintenance spend. So, DL's NET outsourcing is actually 15%, by far the lowest percentage of outsourcing in the western hemisphere.
But you want to pretend that insourcing doesn't exist.. .but to the thousands of DL mechanics who are employed because of DL's insourcing strategy, insourcing keeps jobs at DL that other airlines have outsourced to other companies without replacing.
You also want to conveniently define "maintenance" just as airframe overhauls since that would be the only category that you would have a chance of arguing that DL outsources... but you don't ever bother to note the qualifiers in your statement because if you did, anyone would realize that DL Tech Ops really has the lowest level of outsourcing in the US and western hemisphere industry.
Now that AA has started its layoff policy, DL Tech Ops is the largest airline MRO in the western hemisphere with 10,000 employees.
And the vast majority of those employees are Delta Air Lines employees, not DGS employees. DL has no policy or practice of hiring only DGS employees.
It is hard to know where AA will end up and we can all hope they keep their historic high levels of in-house maintenance but everything says they are falling the UA and US models for maintenance and not the DL model, despite the fact that AA did have a fairly large insourcing operation at one time.
The Wall Street Journal got it right...
"At the heart of Delta's older fleet strategy is its 2.7 million-square-foot complex of maintenance hangars and shops at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, part of a unit that employs 10,000 people across the country. Delta TechOps, as the unit is called, can repair engines, paint aircraft, modify airplanes and overhaul landing gear. Last year, the
profitable unit racked up $650 million in revenue, up from $25 million in 1995. Clients include the U.S. military, aircraft leasing companies and domestic and overseas carriers.
With its mechanics having 19 years of experience on average, Delta believes it has the built-in expertise to cosset its older birds. Doug Worley, a 23-year Delta mechanic in Atlanta, works on all variety of the carrier's domestic aircraft. The McDonnell Douglas planes like the DC-9s and MD-90s are "workhorses," he says. "They're pretty reliable."
