AA MD80s to be gone by end of 2017

[WorldTraveler]

You show me ANY other maintenance facility in the WORLD that can turn an aircraft as fast as Tulsa while maintaining such a high quality standard.
 
Put up or shut up.

I didn't say that AA doesn't do outstanding maintenance.

Efficiency doesn't mean just fast. it means using the least amount of resources and money to get the job done.

DL says that Tech Ops is the lowest cost US carrier maintenance producer and DOT data has repeatedly born that out.

 

[Bob Owens]

All? UAL in SFO.
 
You keep skirting the point that in the US the government actively interferes with negotiations and when they do they nearly always do it in ways that harm the workers and help the carriers, and that only Airline workers are subjected to such a high degree of interference. It could be argued that due to this interference and the lack of success Unions have had thats the reason why Delta workers don't join a Union. How else could you explain how Delta workers without a Union ended up ahead of US, AA, UA and CO? Obviously government interference was at work here. Their main tool is to impose endless "negotiations' while not allowing Unions to engage in industrial actions when the company simply says NO, and if that doesn't work they have a C-11 process thats uniquely tailored to screw over airline workers.  Every other contractor the company deals with has the option to withdraw everything covered under the contract available to them except Labor, in fact every contractor including Labor in every other industry except the rails has that option available to them and the rails are protected in Bankruptcy from the court rulings imposed on airline workers. You claim they are happy because you don't see many Delta workers complaining but if they do they are terminated. Look at the guy who they fired a while back just for advocating a $15hr wage. 
 
The fact is airlines pull in huge amounts of money, they do it with our labor, if we don't show up they don't pull in anything. You claim that they cant pay us, or if they do they have to pass those costs on to the customer, thats a lie. They can negotiate to lower costs with other vendors or accept lower profits.  Even when they were posting losses most of that was BS, how do you lose $1 billion in "Goodwill"? Its legal, but its BS. A gift from the government that lets them avoid paying their fair share of Taxes. The Airlines had no problem paying an extra 30% for landing fees. No problem paying fees and interests to banks for money they didn't need. In 2003 the company claimed that if their cash reserves slipped below a billion that they were technically bankrupt because that would put them in violation of a covenant for a loan they had from a bank, the loan was for $800 million, $200 million less than what they had to keep in cash. Would you take out a loan and pay interest on the loan just to have it sit in the bank as cash?  Five years earlier Crandall was bragging about a $500 million dollar War Chest and that because he was sitting on such a huge sum of money he wasn't worried about a Pilot Strike, but five years later with a Billion in cash they are broke, ten years after that they went bankrupt with $5 billion in cash and came out of BK with $7billion. The only creditors that lost were the workers. 
 
Your response to that will likely be that all the other costs are non-negotiable, I've heard it before, its a standard management response, and again thats a Lie. Jet Blue negotiated favorable rates at JFK. We know that because other carriers made the mistake of bitching about it. Everything is negotiable from terminal space, to fuel, to the price of airplanes, parts, even fees and interest rates, every contract is negotiable. But the fact is the more we give up the more everyone else realizes there is for the taking, and if we don't show up for work ALL of them lose. We need to put ourselves at the head of the line since we actively participate in the business and let everyone else figure out how much they can suck out of this huge cash cow. 
 
Historically Labor costs were around 35% of the total costs of Airline operations, thats our share of what we produce and more than fair for the transportation industry. Thats what we need to get back to. Give us that and you can keep your profit sharing.
 
Maybe the banks cant collect millions in fees just for applying for a loan, lets face it banks don't make money by not lending it. Maybe the vendors need to drop the price of a toilet seat thats costs $10 at most to make somewhere below $1000. Maybe our executives dont need to live in the most expensive house in the Dallas area. Maybe our management team doesn't need to abandon a perfectly good glass and steel corporate Headquarters thats 50 years newer than my wood frame home and waste all that money building a new one thats 10 minutes closer to the neighborhoods where our concessions are funding their elaborate mansions.  Maybe the airports need to reconsider their Landing fees. Maybe for a change somebody else in the industry needs to take the cuts and if none of that is possible then maybe the passengers will have to pay a few pennies more per ticket. Sure none of these things are my decision, but I'm not the one who is claiming I cant afford to pay a fair wage, the fact is we shouldnt really need to care where they get the money because thats their job, thats what they are paid the big bucks for, maybe we pay them too much, I'm not the one asking others to sacrifice and 'invest" my sweat equity into this company with nothing in return, not even Profit Sharing. 
 
 
You are wrong, staffing in High Cost Cities wasn't always a problem, its only been a problem since they started cutting wages and benefits. 

 

[topDawg]

You show me ANY other maintenance facility in the WORLD that can turn an aircraft as fast as Tulsa while maintaining such a high quality standard.
 
Put up or shut up.

lol Not only can we(ATG) turn the airplanes as fast with the quality, we can turn them with less people per tail. 
 
There is a reason why Delta TechOps has reliability numbers that are top of the industry. Let me know when AA goes over 100 days without a single maintenance cancellation. 
 

Or maybe they have to settle for just being "Profitable" and not shoot for the "most profitable" (ie "competitive").  "Can" is a disingenuous term in the context you use it. Its a choice, and they will always find some excuse why they "cant" pay us. We have to tell them what we need if they want us to fix their planes, not ask them what they feel like paying us for it or what they "can" pay us that wont interfere with their objective of being " the most profitable". 
 
We know there will be fewer maint jobs with newer airplanes, and yes the fact is that the old planes saved them a lot of money even though they spent more on maint and fuel, a point I brought up repeatedly on this forum and in negotiations, a point that company sucks like Videtich and Overspeed kept avoiding or tried to dismiss, the question is will the supply of new mechanics even keep up with the reduced demand?  It doesn't look like it will. While the overhaul bases will likely continue to shrink the only A&P mechanics you will see on the Unemployment lines will be those who don't want to work or move to the work. The industry is relying on old men working far too many hours a week to keep their planes safe. Most errors happen when guys are working OT and the more OT, the more errors. With the pensions gone, retiree medical gone, health benefits mostly covered by the users, minimal sick time and few Holidays its cheaper to hire more people than it is to pay 20% of hours worked at OT rates. Benefit costs, which at one time was accepted as nearly as much as the hourly rate is down to less than10%, OT is still paid at a premium of 50%.   So it would be cheaper to hire more people and reduce the OT, but they cant find them, will need 20 more in NY due to transfers to MIA and resignations, the only place they can get mechanics is Eagle and OH, soon those wells will be dry. As soon as guys come off probation they have their transfers in. Headcount is down to around 7500, (so we lost around 10,000 jobs since 2001)thats including Cleaners etc, In Title I they have hired 155 since AA filed BK. 69 A&Ps in NY. 31 Cleaners in Tulsa, no A&P. The other 50 are spread out in other high cost areas such as LAX, DCA, PHL, BOS and ORD. In Title II they are losing guys as fast as they can hire them.
 
So the loss of the MD-80s by end of 2017 may not be good news for Tulsa but even new planes break and manufacturers projections for minimal maintenance have been known to become "modified" once things start breaking.
 
We have tripled our productivity, and thats before the synergies kick in with a joint agreement which will reduce headcount and OT, yet our pay is around 50% in real terms what it used to be. (The Capitalist promise to workers that workers will see increased living standards with increased productivity is an obvious casualty of the end of the Cold War.)
 
Its time to take back. Delta plus 7 plus 4 tied down to a five year deal with pitiful increases is unacceptable, especially when you look at the fact that Delta employees earned 16% Profit sharing and even with the Profit sharing added in Delta workers are still being screwed by getting paid 30% less in real terms than they were prior to Bankruptcy.  Going by the Flight attendants deal in 2020 we would be making what the Delta mechanics are making now. (Do you think that Delta workers will not see regular pay rate increases over the next five years and keep the unions out?) No thanks. The fact is Delta's deal sucks, mechanics who quit Delta are all over the airport working for other carriers, some even quit and came to AA just to show how bad it is. Delta Plus is not what we are looking for, and management doesn't have to worry, whatever we get Delta will surely match to keep the Unions out so management cant complain that what we need will put them at a "competitive disadvantage". Delta workers aren't nearly as happy as you make them out to be. Like us most are old and looking to ride it out till they can retire so they stay, but if they want us to fix things they are going to have to start paying. In 2001, when in real terms we were paid a lot better than we are now we saw a 35% pay increase, in reality we need nearly a 100% pay increase to bring us back to where we were, anything less than that is us showing restraint.
 
   

So much horse crap in such a short post. 
 
They might not be happy in NYC, but I can tell you Atlanta isn't old nor is the majority of the work force unhappy. 
 
Oh and if the world is seeing a shortage of A&Ps we are seeing it at Delta. 
They had 40 or so AMTs in MSP for 330 c-checks and had not hundreds but thousands of applicants apply. The avg. age of those people are also quite young.