AMFAMAN said:
Not when you have to wait 30 minutes for a park crew or an hour to be pushed off the gate. :down: :down:
[post="256843"][/post]
True. Last week I brought an airplane to the gate and after 30 minutes waiting, both engines running, I shut the engines down so the other guy could go out the E&E and go home. The minute I shut them down a ramp supervisor pulls up and throws his hands in the air and asks me what I'm doing. Why he didnt do anything for the 30 minutes prior to that I do not know. 600lbs of fuel were burned during the wait, or around 80 gallons of fuel. Shortly afterwards they finally showed up, got a tractor and towed me the rest of the way.
Here is one of the problems with having fleet do parking. Especially with maintenance moves. On paper it saves money, pay a guy $20/hr instead of $30. But in practice what happens is you spend the extra money because there is no coordination between departments who could care less about how the other departments manpower is used up.
For instance Ramp will call maintenance and say that gates 6, 10, 46 and 49 are ready to go and they need mechanics out there to take them either to the hangar or a hardstand. THe gates are needed for inbound trips. Maintenance will send out eight mechanics at $30/hr and the mechanics will then sit and wait anywhere from 1 to 2 hours waiting for the pushback crew so they can make the 2 to 10 minute trip to wherever they are putting the aircraft. These eight mechanics are half the afternoon crew which only leaves eight mechanics to handle any gate calls and the ETOPS checks and cards. In the meantime we hear inbound flights calling, complaining after a 7 hour trip that they have been waiting for 30 minutes for a gate. They are waiting for the gates that we are sitting on waiting for a pushback crew.
So now you have 8 mechanics at $30/hr, along with the crew of four aircraft at anywhere from $50/hr to $200/hr waiting, APUs and engines running burning thousands of gallons of fuel, all waiting because the company doesnt have enough of the $20/hr guys to do the work.
The eight mechanics would be better utilized pushing back their own aircraft, with the same eight guys you could have two crews taxiing and four guys pushing out the aircraft .
They could move all four aircraft off the gate in an hour. Add four more mechanics with mechanics doing their own pushbacks and you could move all four off the gate in ten minutes. Plus have the extra cushion to handle gate calls and checks.
The present system uses anywhere from 8 to 16 mechanic manhours to move four aircraft off the gate, and it also adds eight to 16 hours for those in the cockpit, along with the six or more flight attendandants and the 1200 gallons of fuel per aircraft per hour burned. Lets also not forget the fustration that our passengers feel when they finally land and have to sit on the plane for an extended period of time.
So you can see how in theory getting Fleet to push back the aircraft may save money, pay a guy $20.hr instead of $30, but in practice what happens is it costs the company a whole lot more. While the answer may appear simple;Hire more $20hr guys, its not, because they dont hire $20 hr guys, they hire them at $8 hr and they dont get to $20 until 12 years later. Only a handful of Fleet guys are ever trained to do pushbacks whereas every mechanic is qualified. Most dont wait around, they quit, which means high turnover, which means security gaps. Last summer we heard that crews would simply walk off the job and go to the beach because it was a nice day. Do you really want to try and pressure these $8hr guys who were hired to throw bags, who have no long term plans to stay, into handling your multimillion dollar aircraft?
The fact is that in stations where you have maintenance you could turn R&D over to them at very little cost, and in fact end up saving money because of things like I just said that do not get factored into the bean counters equations. How much is jet fuel now? $1,50/gal? So figure 1200lbs of fuel not burnt would pay the mechanic salary for the entire day plus you could use him for gate calls and checks. You could even contract in more work from other airlines and make a profit.
Of course this is all dependant on having a mechanic workforce with a high morale, and since the company took away our pay and benifits, morale is not high, so whether or not what could work would work is another story. Mechanics are not going to be too receptive to "Hey now that we are paying you less, reduced headcount, increased your workload, we are now going to add even more work. We cut your pay by $20,000 a year but if you work hard enough and do all this extra work you can get back as much a $150/year in AIP!".
and we get that 150 AIP
