The TWA mods and cross over Are probably more mod work than Delta has done total period....Most people dont understand..A TWA 80 is not a AA80. Most parts don't interchange and none prior to integration.We might as well had Airbusses.....Still today these aircraft are very different under the hood. They cause major delays due to part differences today as well....Example APU different ,radio alt's,gyro's,iru systems installed,engine guage cluster and many more...
ok... so help me understand. How many TW M80s are flying, what mods are being done on them now (not just when those planes entered the fleet), and why should AA's degree of mods be so much higher than DLs?
DL like NW has long had a willingness to acquire and operate aircraft from various sources - configured differently which means different parts, training, etc.
Without going down a tangeant of the benefits/costs of fleet commonality or not, I'm trying to understand why you or others believe that AA's maintenance costs are much different than other carriers because of mods.
As for interior mods, DL has been far more aggressive in this area than other carriers - although UA with the merger integration may match DL's level of activity... not sure. Winglets? Other carriers are doing them too. I find it hard to believe that AA's total level of mod activity is higher than other carriers but perhaps I'm not seeing .
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based on the information provided by Buck and FWAAA, it would appear that AA has about 12K maintenance personnel.
For comparison - because it is a peer airline with major maintenance capabilities, DL Tech Ops says it has just under 10K employees.
http://deltatechops.com/about-us/view/category/about-delta-techops
DL does not do the majority of its overhauls in-house but has a larger fleet of its own plus does contract work for about 150 other carriers; based on DOT and SEC data, DL obtains insourced revenue equal to about 1/4 of what it spends to maintain its own fleet. DL probably has some support staff in their headcounts as well. Thus, perhaps UP TO 2500 DL maintenance personnel do work for other carriers - but I think that number is probably quite high since they insource the highest revenue types of work. Even if it is only 1000 people, it would seem that DL Tech Ops is alot more efficient by maintaining a larger fleet plus doing insourcing, which most people say AA does very little of these days. OTOH, if AA uses half of its maintenance staff to do overhauls leaving about 6000 to do comparable work that DL does (and again AA and DL heavy maintenance do overlap among those 6000 people and what DL Tech Ops does in house on its own fleet), and DL insources as well, then perhaps DL uses about 7500 people to maintain its fleet on a comparable basis of work that AA also does to 6000 for AA.
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If that is true, it would sound like 6000 for overhead is high if the remaining 6000 support comparable work DL does with perhaps 7500-8000.
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I'm trying to get to the question of whether AA maintenance is cost efficient compared to DL. If we had similar information for UA, we could throw that in - and you could do it for any foreign airline if you know those numbers and can normalize them for the differences in work weeks/hours etc. Not sure that any other US airlines have the technical capabilities that AA, DL, and UA have... not sure what AC has left of in-house maintenance capabilities.
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If AA really has half of its maintenance staff - and alot of facilities - devoted to overhead - almost 8% of the entire company - and other airlines outsource the majority of that work, then it might not be surprising if AA might try to outsource overhaul.
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If a BK filing is on the horizon, then union leadership should be thinking about how they approach that reality.
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This is worth thinking thru and discussing.
