http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2003/10/06/daily11.html

US Airways told the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers on Monday that the airline will contract with an Alabama-based company for the overhaul of 10 Airbus narrow-body aircraft due for heavy maintenance checks this fall.

They hope. The IAM clearly shopped for (and apparently found) a favorable venue (Federal District Court in WestPA) to ask for a TRO, which they just might get.

And they should. US should have tried to extract this (outsourcing) in Chaper 11. I'm not often in agreement with the US unions, but Dave is starting to look a lot more like Eastern Frank as things go along (despite the corporate line, they have both the hanger space and the required Airbus tooling at present).

As an aside, one of the A&Ps who works on the Lear fleet for my employer used to work at a shop like this (TIMCO) and basically stated they are flat out profit aware first, and everything else (presumably including work quality and thus safety) second.

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Don't feed the trolls.

The key issue for any TRO and other preliminary injunction that the unions might try to get is whether they can show that they have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. Given that US is using the argument that the company cannot currently provide the overhaul services for the Airbuses (or Airbii - call it what you will) since they do not have the equipment necessary - they may have a position that wins. If US is correct, the union should have made sure that US has what's needed to do the work - if US doesn't - the work may head out the door - and there may be nothing anyone can do about it.

While the venue may appear to be favorable - federal judges (since they have the job for life) don't have to bow to political pressures that a state judge will. So, the question should be - which judge gets the case? That's going to be the most important factor in all this. Not practicing up there, I have no idea what the leanings of the district court judges are in the W. Dist. of Pa. Someone more familiar with that district ought to weigh in on that.

[This message has been edited by CLTFlyer (edited 10-07-2003).]

I can understand the need to save money, and I don't know enough about the in-house capability to figure out whether they have no choice about outsourcing, but you wonder why they keep sticking it to the help. At the very least it could have been pre-sold to them. At some point, if the workforce decides it has no future anyway, you'll start to see the kinds of work disruptions which make it impossible for the customers to trust the company's ability to get you where you are going, when you need it to. With a third of all airline workers out of jobs, and labor givebacks the order of the day, I can't imagine the need for a confrontational approach.

US, depending upon who you ask, received the full set of Airbus tooling when they bought the first few busses. From a practical standpoint, many of the "C" checks that they currently do in house cannot be accomplished without most/all of the tooling required to do the "S" (heavy) check. Think of the periodic "C" checks as small portions of what happens all at once during an "S" check. Anybody saying that US does not have the hanger space is lying thru their teeth--while I was working and living in PIT very early in the year, I could see into the hanger bays they have there. They were not filled to the brim.

I think the IAM was quite shrewd in choosing the venue to seek the TRO. I'm not sure about the Chief Judge, but most of the bench in WestPA seems (IIRC) to be fairly labor friendly.

The real question, of course, is what the operational whiz-kids in CCY will do if they suddenly find a TRO in place, and 10 Airbi they can't fly until the check is done.

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Don't feed the trolls.

Clue, you've never heard of a ERJ? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

And once they set the precedent with the union, watch the company send work out of the USA. I'm with the mechanics on this; this deal stinks. Anybody with a car (especially a nice one) knows that you don't cheap out on maintenance. You just don't have the oversight you need by outsourcing maintenance, and these S checks are MAJOR maintenance.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by SonOfACockroach:
Clue, you've never heard of a ERJ? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif</font>

They'll end up towing ERJs like gliders in WW2.

One of the unspoken issues for USAirways is the fact that all those Airbuses have essentially been on warranty (this is also the knock on JetBlue), meaning they have had lower than average maintenance expenses. For a company that continues to lose copious amounts of money, these things now requiring heavy maintenance can not be a positive event. No wonder they're trying to save money.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by deelmakur:
One of the unspoken issues for USAirways is the fact that all those Airbuses have essentially been on warranty (this is also the knock on JetBlue), meaning they have had lower than average maintenance expenses.</font>

Pray tell, is this standard industry practice with new a/c sales or was it a sweetheart deal to get Airbus placed with US?

Most Airbus deals in North America were "sweetheart". They were very anxious to penetrate the market. Critics of JetBlue constantly carp about how their financial performance will be different once the new planes are off warranty. In that competitive environment, Airbus could never get away with doing that for one, and not the others

The latest on the labour-management battle:

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/travelgetaways/2453143/detail.html

An injunction to stop the outsourcing has been filed in federal court by the machinists. A hearing is set for Friday morning.