ATW Daily News

AA to close Kansas City, other MRO bases next year

Thursday October 29, 2009

American Airlines will close its Kansas City Maintenance Base next September as part of a downsizing of its maintenance and engineering "footprint" that will result in up to 700 management and union job losses.

According to a letter to employees from Senior VP-Maintenance & Engineering Carmine Romano provided to ATWOnline, AA plans to shutter the former TWA facility at MCI, because of "reduced flying and a fleet that has shrunk from a high of more than 900 planes to approximately 600 today." Its San Francisco maintenance base will be reduced to Class II status while current Class II stations at Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul and San Jose, Calif., will close. St. Louis operations "will be downsized to adjust to the reduced flight schedule," Romano wrote (ATWOnline, Sept. 18).

AA said it is "working diligently to find ways to minimize the impact on our people" and is offering a voluntary "separation allowance" of $12,500 to MCI and STL employees who choose to leave prior to September 2010, among other programs.

"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 business, along with the changes to our network and corresponding fleet size," Romano wrote.

He added that AA "remain[s] committed to performing as much of our aircraft maintenance in-house as we are able to accomplish on a competitive basis." Its largest MRO bases are at Tulsa and Fort Worth Alliance.

by Brian Straus

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