Southwest Airlines, the nation’s leading discount carrier flying only domestic routes, has begun heavy maintenance of some of its Boeing 737 fleet in El Salvador, company executives said.
Under agreements with its Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), Southwest on Wednesday flew its first 737 to Aeroman, an El Salvador-based maintenance, repair and overhaul facility. The MRO is at El Salvador International Airport, outside the capital of San Salvador.
Southwest, which flies 539 Boeing 737s, also maintains aircraft at an in-house facility at its base at Love Field in Dallas and at three third-party MROs: ATS in Everett, Wash.; AAR in Indianapolis, Ind.; and PEMCO in Tampa, Fla.
Although company executives and industry analysts said Aeroman is well qualified to perform Southwest’s heavy maintenance, the fact the carrier is outsourcing maintenance to a foreign MRO is at odds with its offbeat, independent image, officials said.
“This is a competitive business,” said Michael Boyd, president of Boyd Group International, an Evergreen, Colo., airline consultant. “Southwest is under tremendous cost and revenue pressure, and they are going to look at places that can do the work most inexpensively.
“But just because the work is being done in El Salvador doesn’t mean it won’t be done well. I’m not worried about Southwest not vetting these people — they didn’t get them out of the Yellow Pages.”
Louie Key, national director of AMFA, the union representing Southwest’s aircraft mechanics, said the four-year contract ratified by the membership in January permits Southwest to outsource to foreign MROs no more than “four lines of maintenance.” A line of maintenance is a nose-to-tail aircraft overhaul in a particular hangar, he said.
The AMFA contract also specifies Southwest must retain its in-house maintenance facilities at Love Field, Midway Airport in Chicago, Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
Source: Tulsa World
By: alertken - 8th July 2009 at 14:23
To Make, or to Buy hangar maintenance: the key is that very word “line” of mtce. 539 (!) a/c operated to a repetitive schedule, minor seasonal fluctuation, throw up time-due inspections wholly predictably at a volume where it makes sense for the Operator to “own” labour/hangar/backshops. “Ownership” of steady-state” labour/land might be dearer than a market offer, but control of downtime, and flexibility of inputs give Operator payback. Ryanair put everything out to market in its early days, then brought selected work in house when volume moved from “pulse” to “line”.
In logic what Southwest puts out to C.America are labour-intensive, but downtime-erratic teardowns with unknown rectification workload, with risk of “waiting for parts” (in my youth, the 2nd. or 3rd. D-check). Such findings would disrupt a “line”. Sane management, in harmony with sane Unions, dump such dog-inputs: Singapore Airlines did the first D-check cycle on its early 747s, but sold them off before the 2nd. became due, not to avoid cost, but to avoid hangar scheduling disruption.
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July 8, 2009 at 6:41 am