Southwest was planning to move aircraft maintenance to El Salvador?

[Manedwolf]

Wow. We're hearing about it because they canceled that plan. Must be truly excellent, world-class aircraft maintenance facilities in...El Salvador. O_o  No wonder the last time I flew, I noticed that the "NO STEP" labels on the spoilers were now bilingual...

Panel Focuses on Airline Safety
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
April 3, 2008 10:51 a.m.

Southwest Airlines Co. executives told lawmakers that the carrier shelved a plan to move some plane-maintenance work to El Salvador because of regulators' increased scrutiny of airline industry maintenance.

Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation's inspector general is preparing to tell the same House panel that the Federal Aviation Administration "developed an overly collaborative relationship" with Southwest Airlines. In prepared testimony, inspector general Calvin Scovel also stated that the FAA "relies too heavily on self- disclosures and promotes a pattern excessive leniency at the expense of effective oversight and appropriate enforcement."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120722964314186289.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[coppertales]

Yep, when airlines fall on hard times, maintenance is the first thing to go.  I no longer fly and I work for an airline......chris3

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

Yep, when airlines fall on hard times, maintenance is the first thing to go.  I no longer fly and I work for an airline......chris3

Holy crap, what do you know that I should know?  I fly Express Jet and Frontier pretty often.

[Fly320s]

Outsourcing (hey, look at me using management words  ) maintenance is quite common, especially the required "heavy maintenance," a.k.a. "C" checks.  My company has used Mx companies in El Salvador and Canada on numerous occassions.

The quality of the work done is not dependent on the country of origin.  The facilities in El Salvador, for instance, are monitored by company representatives as well as the FAA.  As long as the work is done correctly, location is irrelevent.

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

Is it really cheaper to fly all your aircraft to El Salvador for maintenance, than to pay people in the US to do it?

[Fly320s]

Yes.

Why else would we do it?

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

Just seems expensive, with the cost of fuel, and with the size of some fleets, like Southwest. 

[MillCreek]

One of those heavy maintenance companies is close by me, at Paine Field, in Everett, Washington.  It used to be owned by Goodrich and is now called Aviation Technical Services.  I have seen everything from business jets to 747 freighters being worked on there.  I see a great many UPS and FedEx cargo planes there having work done, so they must have the West Coast contract for them.

[ilbob]

Is it really cheaper to fly all your aircraft to El Salvador for maintenance, than to pay people in the US to do it?

Why else would they do it?

You have to remember though - the difference in labor costs are often not the main reason that US companies outsource things overseas, as is often portrayed in the media.

Often the problem is that it is near to impossible to get all the permits necessary to build any kind of manufacturing facility in the US in a reasonable time frame.

Its also a whole lot easier to avoid union issues overseas. In some areas of the US, you are just about forced to deal with unions, and that can add substantial ongoing costs to an enterprise for no benefit to the company, even if salaries and benefits are comparable for the employees.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

unions=kiss of death
i'm a former shop steward and i would close up before going union

[MechAg94]

I bet those other countries also don't have the same payroll taxes and other costs that get added to the basic labor cost.  I bet the liability issues are far less also. 
When people blame corporations for moving work offshore, they always forget to blame our own government for their large part in making it happen.

That is one advantage of something like consumption tax is that it might make it cheaper for companies here to hire and keep employees. 

[MechAg94]

Maintenance being the first thing to go is common in a lot of places since a portion of it is always optional to some extent.  It is not that broken things are not fixed so much as if work can be deferred to future years, it is.  It is a pay me now or pay me later decision and companies are always looking at current year's profits. 

[geronimotwo]

the company i worked for shipped freight from key west to honduras 2-4 times a week. we only had two line mechanics, so when we a more thorough maintenance inspection ("c" check) we would keep the aircraft down there for the weekend. we would hire the local shop and mechanics at the airport, and directly oversee what was being done. we would have some communication issues, but when completed i was always confident the plane would get us home.

[Fly320s]

No offense to the A&Ps, but a person doesn't need to have been raised in the US to understand modern aircraft maintanance.  Some computer knowledge background is helpful, especially when working on modern, glass cockpit airplanes, but isn't necessary.  Most computers are plug-and-play.  Also, many of the scheduled Mx tasks are spelled-out in the shop manual.  Follow the directions, fix the plane.  Yes, that is over-simplified, but you get the idea.

One more reason to outsource heavy Mx:  set-up costs to perform the maintanance can be high.  Special rigs, stands, jigs, tools that are only used every few months can tie-up lots of cash that could be used elsewhere.  Inventory is expensive as well.