tom911

http://www.denverpost.com/business/c...ver?source=rss

Article has a lot more details.

EWR764

UA insourcing above the wing UAX functions at DEN (to mainline employees) prompted OO to decline to renew its below the wing handling as the economics just didn't work anymore.

JOSECONLSCREW28

Simplicity a subsidiary of Menzies will handle below wing operations for UAX at DEN.

Baze

Where are you getting this, it is not what the linked article says, that I could see.

denuaflier

Below was in the post:
"The move is the latest of several personnel shifts made by United. In July, United Airlines "reclaimed" 175 jobs in Denver that were outsourced to SkyWest"

Baze

I am confused by EWR764's statement as they are saying SkyWest declined to renew below the wing. The article says UA killed it. So you are basically confirming my understand that UA is making the shifts, not SkyWest declining to renew.

Plane-is-home

I am looking forward to the change. Wait times at DEN for baggage had become very long over the past 2 years.

channa

My read is that UA put it out for bid like they do every 3 years, and from EWR764's comment, SkyWest decided not to bid.

Baze

So that tells me UA didn't "dump" them as the title of the thread and article suggest and sort of how I read the article. Just that SkyWest declined to bid. I still can't find anywhere in the article linked that that is the case. If there is another article that says more along the lines you and EWR764 suggest please link it. I re-read the article 2 more times and don't see where SkyWest declined to bid. Maybe I am blind, but I can't find that in the article linked.

DENviaLAX

The UAX below the wing work at DEN was done entirely by Skywest. About a month ago UA decided to in source the majority of the work to UA employees, with the biggest job function being the transfer bag work. Essentially all Skywest was going to be left with (and what Simplicity is taking over) was the work planeside. Skywest's contract was up in September, so whether they were outbid for it or potentially didn't bid at all..that I don't know.

Skywest was really struggling at DEN though. But to be fair, they've been forced to handle a lot of flights and simply never had the resources to do it efficiently. Things have already improved a lot as UA employees started doing some of the transfer bag stuff, and it will continue to get better.

At the same time, I believe most of the UA employees outsourced at other stations had the option to transfer to Denver. And there was recently a posting for part time ramp at DEN, so they're hiring more people off the street as well. All good things for UA at DEN.

channa

FWIW, I'm just interpreting what I see here. I have no knowledge one way or another, and if EWR764 got his information from UA, we have to take that with a grain of salt as well. Recall they haven't been very truthful with us on other aspects.

andrewwm

Other posters from SkyWest posted on a thread on the same topic on airliners.net and confirmed EWR764's information. EWR764 has been a straight shooter on this forum + SkyWest employee information seals it for me.

SkyWest didn't have the resources and systems in place to run only planeside baggage efficiently once UA insourced everything else - their metrics were horrible and they had trouble maintaining appropriate staff levels.

You want to go where?

The article and title are also a bit misleading as it implies that this is a net loss of 650 jobs, while in fact, the new contractor will have to hire people to do this work. It isn't like the work won't be there - it will just be managed by someone else.

EWR764

No inside information from UA or anyone else, just from publicly-available sources. Sometimes what I hear is right, sometimes it's wrong, and there are plenty of examples of both. I just put it out there. In this intance, while United ultimately calls the shots as to who ground-handles its contracted flying, OO could not put together a competitive bid. There are some other factors at play here, including poor operational metrics and lost efficiency due to the insourcing of above-the-wing handling that likely negatively influenced this outcome for OO.

What's telling for me is that OO is representing to its own employees that this was not a cost-motivated decision by UA. I'm sure SkyWest does not want to damage its relationship with UA by suggesting that this is purely a cost-cutting move, but on the other hand, what does it have to gain by implying it was something else?

In the end, more passengers are going to be dealing with more mainline UA employees than before, as certain passenger-facing UAX functions are brought in-house, and other functions that were previously outsourced are just remaining outsourced. Is that a necessarily bad thing?

gobluetwo

Based on my read of the article, it seems like there was an evergreen contract in place with option to renew, but UA opted to go to bid instead.

Even SkyWest's COO and spokesperson both said that SkyWest did not perform up to standards (read: they didn't meet their SLA's), so it appears to be more a quality issue than cost issue. Regardless of who gets the work (and agreed that it's not like the new vendor will be finding 650+ employees without any overlap from teh former SkyWest ranks), if it improves service quality, I'm all for it.