Posted: 7/19/2012 10:18:08 PM EDT
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I work at Delta Airlines and for the past few years they have been trying to grow their MRO to bring in new business. While the engine maintenance part of it has taken off the actual aircraft side has fallen off.
Now hear me out. I have worked for other MRO's like MAE (Mobile Aerospace Engineering) and TIMCO (Triad International maint. co.) but the fact of the matter is we are too expensive. Before a lot of us mechanics were furloughed in 2006 we were told by our director of maintenance that, as a matter of fact, paying to fix our own aircraft is a burden to the company. So now Delta outsources its maintenance to China (767), Mexico (MD88, MD90), San Antonio Aerospace ((757,767) and even TIMCO. I work in a department that has just reduced its size by 1/3 due to the fact that a couple of companies no longer are able to bring their aircraft here due to financial reasons (North American and World Airways). I feel that this company plans to use mostly contractors in this capacity to work on future aircraft to model after other MRO's. This is where my problem lies! After working at other MRO's (Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul facilities) you do not receive an aircraft that is better than when it first arrived. Several employees did not speak English and used someone to interpret for them. Even more these type of facilities hire anyone with a heartbeat to help fill demand but depend on a select few to sign off the work. It amazes me that these aircraft are signed off and ready to return to service since some of these aircraft return to us with problems that we need to fix to make them right. The commercial aviation side of business might be expensive but not having professional work on your airframe will cost you in the near future but when accountants are in charge the only thing that matters is cost per hour. I have seen both sides of this coin and until Delta sells itself as a company MRO that will work on your aircraft professionally to fix your aircraft this won't matter as other companies will sell you short and do it cheaper. In short, it sucks that my profession is looked upon as a bunch of grease monkeys who will work for bottom dollar while maintaining your aircraft. It takes year of experience to work at the pace I am at but yet the cost per hour is the main goal. There isn't a happy medium in this at all but rather an aircraft that was maintained by the lowest bidder at the lowest bidder's experience. |
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In your opinion, how do the domestic US airlines rank in terms of airframe maintenance? If I don't want the elevators to lock up at 30,000 feet, who should I avoid? Your elevators have three systems supplying hydraulic pressure to three separate actuators. Your aircraft will most likely leave that MRO working just fine but they will let go other systems that are not 100%. Redundancy is what helps commercial aircraft stay airborne, inexperience is what keeps them grounded. |
| I guess my first question is, are you part of the problem or the solution? You have chosen to work for DAL on the premise that they have a quality product that you can stand behind. What made you leave the company that you previously worked for? Unfortunately, what you are doing is publicly bashing the company that believed enough in you to offer you a job. The great thing about the free market is, that if quality is not apparent, then employers or employees are free to look other places. The bean counters are the ones that look at the numbers, but there are other factors that have to be taken into account. There are many higher level positions looking at this and taking risk factors into play. DAL, in my opinion, has one of the highest quality products in the MRO world. They have gone from insourcing under $100 million, to a forecast of between $600 to $700 million, in 10 years. With the economy in the shape that it is in today, I believe that DAL has made some great decisions in maintenance. I am third generation DAL, and yes, they have been flying and providing for my family for the last 66 years... |
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I guess my first question is, are you part of the problem or the solution? You have chosen to work for DAL on the premise that they have a quality product that you can stand behind. What made you leave the company that you previously worked for? Unfortunately, what you are doing is publicly bashing the company that believed enough in you to offer you a job. The great thing about the free market is, that if quality is not apparent, then employers or employees are free to look other places. The bean counters are the ones that look at the numbers, but there are other factors that have to be taken into account. There are many higher level positions looking at this and taking risk factors into play. DAL, in my opinion, has one of the highest quality products in the MRO world. They have gone from insourcing under $100 million, to a forecast of between $600 to $700 million, in 10 years. With the economy in the shape that it is in today, I believe that DAL has made some great decisions in maintenance. I am third generation DAL, and yes, they have been flying and providing for my family for the last 66 years... You work as a mechanic as well? Have you been to other MRO's or worked for them? Delta does put out an excellent product because it has many experienced mechanics who know what they're doing. |
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Has anyone else here worked for an MRO that fixes commercial aircraft? This isn't a Delta Airlines bashing thread but rather a thread about the ever changing world of commercial MRO business. I have worked at the sweat shop MRO's such as MAE and TIMCO and know what I am talking about when it comes to maintaining a commercial aircraft.
Delta Airlines does maintenance right and I'm proud to work for such a professional company but my intent has been obviously overlooked. The intent of this thread is the difference in professionalism between the MRO's which support commercial aircraft. When I worked at other repair stations the experience involved in maintaining the aircraft hung on a few individuals. I believe Delta is underselling our mechanics when it comes to producing a better product than other MRO's can produce. I work in a department that takes care of contract aircraft to include Air Force C-40's (B737) and C-32's (B757), Janet Airlines (B737), Atlas, LAN Chile and Navy C-40's (B737). The aircraft leave better repaired than when they arrived and function great afterwards. Never before in the history of our Technical Operations have we had to reduce our capacity by 1/3 in our department because we lost contracts due to the unavailability of that contract. Here in lies a problem I foresee in the near future. It's no secret that my department is contract base but after losing a couple of contracts because they went bankrupt leaves my department without work which was previously planned for. Now here is something you don't know about Delta Airlines. We use contractors at our home base to work on our own aircraft. (Delta Global Services). Since we have merged with Northwest Airlines it appears our business has aligned with the Northwest philosophy. Our new CEO is former Northwest CEO and his view of maintenance is far different from what we (Delta) are use to. Using contractors as a means to save money per man hour is the way to go. What do you gain when you hire someone to maintain a commercial aircraft for less pay and no benefits? This is my conundrum and maybe you will understand. |
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Our future is more focus on ASM's doing the work and the AMT's doing the sign off.
Sucks, and you are correct about the Northwest model. I'm on the engine side and we are seeing the handwriting on the wall as to the direction the NW management team is taking us. I hate sounding like an old guy, but Delta is not the same company I hired on with. |
| I have come from the engine side also. I spent many years there, went through multiple engines and progressed into QC. The deal with staffing(DGS), is that if there are headcount cuts, they will be first. Unfortunately, they do have to be looked after. I have known several people that have come back from lay-offs into DGS, then were re-hired by DAL. I agree about the headcount reductions being a PITA. I was always looking over my shoulder when it would get slow. Now what has happened, all of the contracts are being looked at for a profit margin check. The ones Costing us money, are gone. Some of the MRO work was achieved just to get it in the door. Now, that idea has come back to bite us. If the contracts were worth the money, for both DAL and the customer, DAL is using the quality and maintenance experience as a bargaining tool. I hope to see more of them return, so we can all sleep better at night! |
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I have come from the engine side also. I spent many years there, went through multiple engines and progressed into QC. The deal with staffing(DGS), is that if there are headcount cuts, they will be first. Unfortunately, they do have to be looked after. I have known several people that have come back from lay-offs into DGS, then were re-hired by DAL. I agree about the headcount reductions being a PITA. I was always looking over my shoulder when it would get slow. Now what has happened, all of the contracts are being looked at for a profit margin check. The ones Costing us money, are gone. Some of the MRO work was achieved just to get it in the door. Now, that idea has come back to bite us. If the contracts were worth the money, for both DAL and the customer, DAL is using the quality and maintenance experience as a bargaining tool. I hope to see more of them return, so we can all sleep better at night! Many of the contractors are former retired Delta employees who are great. I've been told by former Northwest employees that our CEO likes to use contractors because they don't pay them benefits. Our aircraft were being outsourced for years before our Northwest merger but I have been working base maintenance for years now and this is something that is unprecedented. Sometimes I think that I should have left recently while you had a chance. |
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I worked there for a time in engineering (some as a co-op, and some as a DGS brown badge weasel); I'm sure some of you fellas have seen my paperwork. I left when the company wouldn't bring me on non-contract. I'm trying to build a career as an engineer (not that it's really possible anymore), not get laid off at on whim. Some observations from my time in (kinda rambling): There was a lot of dead weight, perpetuated by the way the company treated it's hard workers (At least in engineering, and other desk jobs). It seemed to work something like this: 1. Offer an early out package. 2. Knowledgeable, hard working, eligible employees take package. 3. No transfer of knowledge happens down to the remaining worthwhile employees. 4. Worthless employees continue to be worthless. 5. Work slows to a crawl. 6. Management panics, wondering whatever could have happened. 7. Company hires back employees as contractors paying them 115% of their previous salary. Company is already paying their medical (and flight benefits) through their early-out package. I will say I have never worked with a group of more knowledgeable wrenchers (yeah there were some turds...but you'll have that). I learned a lot from the guys on the floor and can't thank them enough. I have never hesitated to step on any aircraft that left that hangar. The Tech Sales guys appeared to know little to nothing about the airframe MRO world. You cannot sell airframe work the same as engine work. When you tear apart an engine and find something bad, you remove and replace; when you tear into a wing area and find corrosion you can't. They never seemed to grasp that, and would either undersell or oversell the work. When you can send something to a foreign MRO with 10-20 unlicensed guys supervised by one license holder to sign cards, it's going to be a lot cheaper. Some foreign MROs generated about 1/20 the engineering paperwork (repairs out of SRM limits were still supposed to come through us) as we did during visits; I guess the airplanes just stopped aging  .It sucks to lose NA and World; that's a big blow. Be glad LAN is still coming around. The most important thing I've learned in my very young career: Aviation is expensive. If you can do it cheap, some other guy will always do it cheaper. |
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I worked there for a time in engineering (some as a co-op, and some as a DGS brown badge weasel); I'm sure some of you fellas have seen my paperwork. I left when the company wouldn't bring me on non-contract. I'm trying to build a career as an engineer (not that it's really possible anymore), not get laid off at on whim. Some observations from my time in (kinda rambling): There was a lot of dead weight, perpetuated by the way the company treated it's hard workers (At least in engineering, and other desk jobs). It seemed to work something like this: 1. Offer an early out package. 2. Knowledgeable, hard working, eligible employees take package. 3. No transfer of knowledge happens down to the remaining worthwhile employees. 4. Worthless employees continue to be worthless. 5. Work slows to a crawl. 6. Management panics, wondering whatever could have happened. 7. Company hires back employees as contractors paying them 115% of their previous salary. Company is already paying their medical (and flight benefits) through their early-out package. I will say I have never worked with a group of more knowledgeable wrenchers (yeah there were some turds...but you'll have that). I learned a lot from the guys on the floor and can't thank them enough. I have never hesitated to step on any aircraft that left that hangar. The Tech Sales guys appeared to know little to nothing about the airframe MRO world. You cannot sell airframe work the same as engine work. When you tear apart an engine and find something bad, you remove and replace; when you tear into a wing area and find corrosion you can't. They never seemed to grasp that, and would either undersell or oversell the work. When you can send something to a foreign MRO with 10-20 unlicensed guys supervised by one license holder to sign cards, it's going to be a lot cheaper. Some foreign MROs generated about 1/20 the engineering paperwork (repairs out of SRM limits were still supposed to come through us) as we did during visits; I guess the airplanes just stopped aging .It sucks to lose NA and World; that's a big blow. Be glad LAN is still coming around. The most important thing I've learned in my very young career: Aviation is expensive. If you can do it cheap, some other guy will always do it cheaper. Thanks for your engineering perspective on this. Like any company, Delta has its share of dead weight where the few mechanics that work hard have to pick up the slack for the ones who don't. Delta is really separated by two different companies, day/second shift and midnight shift. People with the most seniority almost feel entitled to not have to work as much or sometimes do nothing except drink coffee and attend daytime events. On the midnight shift we have ready times for the aircraft in the morning. I know there will always be animosity between the crews but when you pick up on a job that you turned over the morning before, that gets old quick. The way Delta puts people in areas of management bewilders us. Our current supervisor is a nice guy but he is in way over his head in his position. I won't go into his history but his experience working aircraft is less than most mechanics. I'm not trying to bash my management team but their lack of communication with us doesn't help. Like I said, day shift is a whole different company and the midnight shift is just there to keep the big jobs moving along. In my opinion, most people are not held accountable for the work they perform or don't perform. We have it very good here and I try my best to help get these aircraft out the door. Attitude needs to change here for the better soon or we will see more cuts like we do now. |
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It's about the almighty dollar, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to pay a non union MRO to due heavy checks rather than union airline guys performing heavy checks. Beans counters think this way. As far as the quality, I guess it depends on with side of the fence your on. There will always be the airline guys vs MRO guys pissing match. I've seen shitty maintenance on both parts. I've personally seen line maintenance guys squawk a bunch of shit on plane fresh out of a heavy check from MRO, just to try and make the outsourced MRO look bad.
What a lot of folks don't realize about MRO 's is the MRO must abide by the work scope, dictated by the airline or customer. When you start inspecting or going outside the work scope, the customer starts getting pissy. Yes, the line guys got there ass handed to them by there own management. The shit they squawked wasn't part of the work scope during that check performed by the MRO. Why do an 8C check when it's on due for a service check? MRO's are only going to due what they have to and nothing more. I guess you lay some blame on the airlines itself due to the way the CAMP program is written. Same plane, different airlines, one plane in great shape and the other is a turd, and serial number nearly the same with nearly the same hours. Please don't get me wrong, i'm not defending or bashing either one. I see your point completely. I personally think you get what you pay for. Pay good wages, get good help. The company I work for is bad about hiring a&p's fresh out of school for bottom dollar. Out of 5 you'll get one worth a shit, and he only stays long enough to gain experience, then leaves for more money. Anymore I try not to get wrapped around the axle about it. All I can do is my job to the best of my ability, and go home. Trust me I used to get pissed when we would hire contractors who wasn't worth a damn, making more than me, tear up more shit than they fix. It will eat you alive if you let it. It's just a side of aviation they we can't change, all we can due is our part as mechanics and take pride in knowing we do our jobs to the best standards. |