The majority of the work DL is components, not checks, checks is where the headcount is, not the back shops.
I guess you dont understand US and its CBA, the heavy checks can only be outsourced at 50% of billable hours, components and engines are not in the count.
Come to PIT and CLT and see over half the fleet is overhauled in-house, you cant say the same about Delta now can you?
US doesnt in-source Heavy, as they are too busy with their own planes.
And while you continue to cling to the narrow definition of what is outsourced and what is not, DL continues to earn a half of a billion dollars per year in work from other carriers who pay DL to do maintenance for them.
Apparently you and a few other people somehow think that there is something sacred about overhauls that doesn't exist for other types of maintenance but jobs are jobs.
The simple fact is that of its ENTIRE maintenance budget, 41% is outsourced to other companies, including the $200M or so every year for the past several years that has been spent on upgrading the cabins of its international fleet so those planes can continue to fly for DL.
While US keeps half of its overhaul inhouse, they OUTSOURCE more than 70% of the rest of their maintenance spend, because that is what the math works out to if they keep 50% of their overhauls inhouse and end up with a total of 60% of dollars going out the door.
You congratulate those overhaul mechanics at the same time you explain to the ones on the street why their union signed a CBA with the company that gave them the power to outsource more than 2/3 of the work they did.
I'm sure they will be very grateful.
You do realize that DL receives more than half of the revenue from insourced maintenance that US spends on TOTAL maintenance? US' entire maintenance budget is about $700M per year compared to $500M that DL receives in insourced revenue. You might want to be a little more careful about how quickly you dismiss the amount of work that DL receives for its mechanics to do from other airlines.
You truly didn't believe that DL had fewer ramp employees than US, did you?
Silver,
say hi to all of those cousins.
As much as anyone here would like to argue otherwise, DL has been the most strategically focused US airline and has been able to see where the industry is going faster than others and reposition DL to prosper. At the same time that DL has brought jobs back to DL employees, DL's competitors have been outsourcing more, missing major strategic opportunities, and failing to address the financial issues that not only have to be addressed to secure the future of the company on Wall Street, but also for its employees.
The fact that DL went into the summer with a CASM advantage over every other network airline except for US which had a 1% CASM advantage - and that was before US started paying the costs of its merger integration CBAs - speaks volumes about DL's ability to do what is necessary to win.
And they are still able to do all that - including building DL's presence on the west coast - while ensuring DL employees fare as well or better than employees of their network carrier peers.
