Share
Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
American Airlines announced this morning that it will be cutting 700 maintenance and engineering positions and will close its Kansas City maintenance base by September.
The Fort Worth-based airline said the job cuts are a result of the reduction of the number of planes in its fleet from 900 in 2000 to 600 airplanes today. The workforce reduction is almost 6 percent of the company's maintenance and engineering division.The cuts will affect management, union and non-union employees at several maintenance locations across the United States. No changes were announced for the Alliance-Fort Worth and Tulsa facilities which are the only remaining major overhaul maintenance bases for American."Our goal with these changes is to move toward a more flexible, cost-efficient operation that improves flow and takes into account the long-term impact of the recession on travel, deep capacity cuts across the industry, and a corresponding decline in the MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) business, along with the changes to our network and corresponding fleet size," said Carmine Romano, senior vice president of maintenance and engineering in a letter to employees.The cuts will affect 490 workers in Kansas City, about 100 in San Francisco and approximately 80 in St. Louis. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Jose and Detroit, those maintenance crews will lose 19, 18, and 15 positions respectively.The company is offering a $12,500 early seperation payment for workers who would like to leave prior to the changes in September 2010. Some workers in North Texas could be affected by "bump and roll" if more senior employees at the affected bases choose to take positions at Alliance or D/FW and then bump junior workers at the local facilities.The maintenance realignments include:-A reduction in St. Louis' line operations as the company shrinks the number of flights it has out of that airport.-Changing the San Francisco operations to a Class II station where only overnight maintenance checks are performed.-Closing the Class II stations at Detroit, Minneapolis, San Jose and Kansas City.
@Nyx.CommentBody@