AA, Rolls shutter Alliance facility

With Tuesday’s joint announcement from American Airlines and Rolls-Royce that they will shut down their joint-venture engine repair facility at Alliance Airport, the north Fort Worth airport loses a major tenant — and one of its first.

Still, it’s unlikely that the airport or the surrounding AllianceTexas development will suffer greatly, nor will Fort Worth-based American.

The airline said most of the 600 workers at Texas Aero Engine Service LLC will be offered jobs at American. The airline has been growing fast and reporting record profits.

American opened a major maintenance facility at Alliance in 1992 but moved out of it in 2013 as part of the company’s bankruptcy restructuring. The facility was a major spur to Alliance growth and the lengthening of its runways.

American and Rolls-Royce created TAESL as a 50-50 partnership in 1998.

Rolls-Royce cited “declining future volumes of overhauls” for the engines repaired at the Alliance location.

This story was originally published September 29, 2015 at 5:53 PM with the headline "AA, Rolls shutter Alliance facility."