In 2009 UAL said that outsourced maintenance services made up 13% of their total operating expenses,(based on 2007 numbers) and AA does most of that work in house with only 3 more heads per airplane. Seems like the jury is out, OH saves AA a ton of money!
Thanks for the UAL presentation. I looked at the pie chart and you're wrong, just like I pointed out in May when you first said that UAL had told its employees that outsourced maintenance consumed 13% of total costs in 2007.
The pie chart tracks the categories shown on the 2007 UAL 10-K but for some inexplicable reason in one instance it combines two categories, "Aircraft maintenance materials and outside repairs" plus "Purchased services" to form an inartfully described "Maintenance & related purchased services" and labels the expense as 13% of costs. That does not say that UAL spent 13% of its total costs on outsourced maintenance.
From the 10-K, it is clear that UAL spent $1.166 billion on "Aircraft maintenance materials and outside repairs" which equals 6.1% of total costs. That category includes outsourced maintenance plus parts and materials purchased for insourced maintenance. UAL still overhauls engines in SFO plus performs A, B and C checks, just not D checks (or as AA calls them, heavy C checks). To compare, AA spent just $826 million on the same category in 2007, or just 3.7 % of total costs (AA 10-K, not AMR 10-K, to get just mainline costs). That's logical since AA outsources some component work but still performed all heavy C checks in-house. So of course, UAL's spending on that item (which includes all outsourced maintenance) would be larger as a percentage than at AA.
And, of course, AA's labor expense is proportionately larger, in part because UAL reported just 5,551 unionized maintenance personnel in 2007 compared to, say, 12,000 or more at AA in 2007.
What about the other UAL category called "Purchased services?" UAL spent $1.346 billion on that one in 2007 but that category does not include any maintenance. That category covers all other outsourced labor and services, like outsourced ramp and outsourced IT and outsourced customer call centers (Manilla, India, etc). It covers all the people who do work on UAL's behalf but aren't UAL employees, like the employees of World or Globe or ICT or others who push wheelchairs or guard the elite security lines or work as skycaps. It covers outsourced ticket agents and gate agents in stations where UAL doesn't have its own employeees. It covers consultants (and those can be expensive). It doesn't include maintenance. Maintenance has its own category called "Aircraft maintenance materials and outside repairs."
What we don't know is what UAL spent on outsourced maintenance in 2007. We do know that it was no more than $1.166 billion - and of course, it was actually less than that, since that number includes parts and materials for insourced maintenance.
As I pointed out six months ago, your assertion made no sense on its face. UAL had just 460 mainline planes in 2007 and if it spent $2.5 billion on just outsourced maintenance, that would equal $5.43 million per plane in the entire fleet, or more than enough to completely overhaul every plane in UAL's fleet in 2007 (AA has previously estimated a heavy C check at $2 million to $4 million per plane).
Overall, I believe that you are a good person. You desparately want outsourced maintenance to be much more costly than insourced maintenance. Despite what Dave posts, you want overhaul to remain inhouse and you aren't trying to throw TULE and DWH under the bus to get what your membership deserves.
But I find it troubling that you would misinterpret a single crappy pie chart presented by UAL management to its employees as establishing as fact that UAL spent 13% of its total expenses in 2007 just on outsourced maintenance. To me, it demonstrates a failure to think critically. I realize that you often show a profound hatred toward me and everything I post here. I can only guess that it's because I frequently push you to think before you speak and when someone posts outlandish "facts," I challenge them to prove those "facts."
IMO, that's the only way your membership has any chance of achieving the market rate for A&P mechanics of at least $50/hr. Every day, however, I become more and more convinced that it will not happen until the TWU is replaced as the bargaining agent plus professional negotiators are hired. And you and every other current mechanic on the negotiating team are replaced. You previously posted that you aren't even asking for UPS-level wages.
And as I've pointed out before, you spend an inordinate amount of time arguing "sky is blue" facts with me and others here. I have no doubt that you're an excellent airplane mechanic. I have my doubts about your skills in certain other areas.
