We at AA are being told continually by the compAAny and union that, "AA is the only airline performing their own heavy maintenance". Translation: reduce turn times significantly or the work will be outsourced. Can any employee of United confirm that you do absolutely no heavy maintenance on your own aircraft?
Heavy Maintenance?
- Thread starter Birdman
- Start date
I am not a UA employee. But I asked a recently laid off UA AMT what aircraft types does UA still do heavy maintanence on? His reply: none.Birdman said:
mrfish3726
Veteran
- Jul 7, 2004
- 931
- 0
Consider yourselves lucky there that AA still realizes the importance of keeping the in house heavy maintenance going. United shed all their heavy maintnance obligations and closed Oakland, and the Indianapolis base. They are in cahoots with AAR which has hired all the old UAL management to re-open the INDY maintenance center. Believing that all the old UAL employees would come on board for half the price. They are doing 737 heavy checks on UAL aircraft exclusively at this time.
- Thread Starter
- #4
It's funny you mention this. Our online maintenance website Q & A section states UAL's maintenance budget in 2004 soared to $2.8 billion compared to our $2.2. If true it's anything but luck. Management's see dollar's period! I can see consolidation of maintenance bases, but to outsoarce 100% without an effort to improve from within is irresponsible. I've yet to have it proven to me it's cheaper to oursource. No one knows (right) what third party maintenance costs, how long it takes them, how the MRO bill of work compares to inhouse etc.... I don't want to venture to far into outerspace but there seems to be a conspiracy to bust the unions chops (duh). Can anyone shed light??
Birdman said:
It all depends on how you account for it. Take a look at the income statement. you'll notice the BIG number or Salaries, Benefits ect. Then down the list is MX. If you employee people and pay them under line one, and put parts on the MX line, then the REAL MX cost would be all the mechanic salaries in line 1 PLUS the MX cost down the line. Now pretend that by outsourcing, your Salary line goes down $100 million, while your MX went UP by $50 million. The TWU would loudly pronounce 'they outsourced and now MX is more expensive!!!' Is it?
- Thread Starter
- #6
Busdrvr, I see your point. I have no idea where the person anwering Q & A on the companies website got their numbers. Perhaps shared through the AirCon cartel. I've not been able to verify the numbers through Transtats or 10k's. It is almost humorous for the compAAny to produce numbers insinuating it costs more to outsource and then threaten to outsource if productivity does not increase.
Who picks up the cost when the aircraft spends days in a hanger after returning from a vendor? Does UA send a bill to Timco or AAR? Do they subtract the cost from the next overhaul? If they don't recover any of the cost then I'm not sure there are the big savings they claim. That leads us back to union busting. I would like to see all the numbers.
Birdman said:
Yes, UAL hasn't much of a clue as to the 'costs' and/or 'cost savings' regarding outsourcing. 'SW does it and is profitable then we must do it also and we will be profitable.' Not surprising that we are loosing $$$ as the vendors know too well the incompetence of UA accounting processes is not geared up to do this kind of work yet we jump in with both feet.
Take a look at DAL. They do not have a unionized workforce yet dump all of their HMV on OSV!
It isn't about 'cost savings'!
B) UT
UAL_TECH said:
In case you have not noticed, its whats happening. Not just at UA:
http://www.amtonline.com/article/article.j...ction=1&id=1606
