sonofzeus

NBC 5 (Ft Worth) has learned that Fort Worth-based American Airlines may cut between 10,000 and 15,000 jobs across the company.

Sources familiar with the plan said they company plans to announce the cuts during a meeting Wednesday morning in Fort Worth.

It is estimated that 1,000 of those jobs to be cut will be at the company's maintenance base at Alliance Airport in north Fort Worth.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/business/...477399.html?dr

jaguar

I think they have less than 75K employees, so this is quite a reduction.

lobo411

Bets on whether they'll be outsourcing these jobs to El Salvador?

Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to operate *ANY* aircraft that hasn't been serviced at an American maintenance facility anywhere in the US, except for a handful of ports of entry (JFK, for instance).

http://luterano.blogspot.com/2009/06...s-move-to.html

gegarrenton

lol. Nothing like ridiculous statements on a Wednesday morning....

Steve M

It's already illegal for foreign-flagged aircraft to operate domestic routes in the US. Are you saying that foreign aircraft should be restricted from certain international airports in the US that they currently fly to? Or are you saying that even foreign-flagged aircraft should have a US-only maintenance requirement? Or are you saying the above should apply only to US-flagged aircraft?

As an aside, most if not all CO 777 heavy maintenance as well as interior refurbishment is done in Hong Kong. It's somewhat convenient in that CO flies scheduled 777 service to HKG, so this reduces the ferry flights required. But they also service 767s there IIRC, and this requires ferry flights in all cases. So it's not at all unusual for an US-based airline to have heavy maintenance done in another country. I'm sure the unions don't like it though. Part of the problem is that the routes that a 777 operates on are almost exclusively international, meaning that they need to compete with foreign airlines and their lower cost structure. There's pretty much no way around that.

Interestingly, there have been articles in a Hong Kong newspaper about an aircraft servicing company, and how they are using the Hong Kong equivalent of the H1-B/H2-B visa program to import cheaper labor from the Philippines to work as aircraft mechanics. The local mechanics don't like this. Different country, same problem.

SFO777

No doubt because no one outside of the US knows how to properly maintain an airplane.

lobo411

This. It should apply to US operators on domestic routes. According to the DOT's Office of the Inspector General, there are 100 FAA inspectors who are supposed to cover 700 repair facilities worldwide. In the US, there are 4000 inspectors for 4200 facilities.

UAL's contractor in Beijing maintains a staff of 5 licensed aviation mechanics...supervising 2500 unlicensed mechanics who do the actual work!

DAL's contractor in Mexico maintains a staff of 50 licensed mechanics supervising 550 unlicensed mechanics!

lobo411

If you need your gall bladder removed, would you trust me to do the job since I can go on google and figure it out? Or would you prefer to have a trained, licensed doctor operating out of a professionally inspected facility?

FWAAA

Ya gotta wonder why the thousands of airplanes flown by non-USA airlines aren't falling out of the sky. LH, BA, QF, CX, JL, SQ, and all the rest overhaul their airframes and engines (insourced or outsourced) outside the USA and their collective maintenance safety record is no worse than the domestic carriers.

lobo411

Compared to the US and Europe (where nobody is talking about outsourcing jobs to, btw) they are:

IATA's assessment of regional safety performance, using the same parameters (Western-built jet hull losses per million sectors) sees most regions performing better than they did in 2010. Europe had no such accidents, Southern Africa recorded a rate of 3.93 compared with 8.26 in 2010, and the respective rates for the other regions were as follows: Latin America and the Caribbean 1.43 compared with 2.00; Middle East and North Africa 0.76 against 0.8; Asia Pacific 0.2 against 0.9; North Asia zero compared with 0.38, and North America the same as 2010 at 0.11. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was worse at 1.39 in 2011 compared with a clean sheet the previous year, but the CIS numbers always look rather artificial when judged by this parameter because there were five Eastern-built jet hull losses among CIS operators in 2011 and those are not included.

http://www.flightglobal.com/Features...ccident-rates/

tugokc

Duct tape, nuff said.
but to stay on topic, many FB posts already after this announcement.

SFO777

It is a shame that no other country has trained and licensed doctors, or even plumbing, running water and electricity.

chanp

That's a lot of cuts. While we worry about cut backs say on board or other areas, there will be a lot of AA families hurt.

freeupgrade

This is very sad - so sorry to hear this. A lot of hard working people are going to be impacted by this.

ty97

Hopefully AA can reduce the impact of job cuts by offering incentives for retirement for those employees who might be at or close to the retirement time. Sadly, I doubt this will be enough to fill all the job reductions slots, but at least it would limit the impact some.