American Airlines Inc. said Wednesday it intends to close its Kansas City, Mo., maintenance base in September and eliminate about 700 maintenance and engineering jobs.
The decision could mean more jobs at American’s Fort Worth base at Alliance Airport, as well as at its biggest base in Tulsa, Okla., as the carrier redistributes the work done in Kansas City.
American, which acquired the large maintenance center in 2001 with its purchase of Trans World Airlines Inc.’s assets, had warned in March that three bases might be too many.
In a letter to employees Wednesday, American said the closing was a natural consequence of the shrinking of its fleet from more than 900 aircraft after the TWA purchase to about 600 now, and the restructuring of its route system this year.
“As American, like the rest of the industry, continues to reduce capacity, we must be strategic in structuring a maintenance system that serves the needs of the fleet we fly today as well as the plans in place for our airline in the future,” wrote American executive Carmine J. Romano.
The closing will leave American’s Alliance and Tulsa bases as the primary locations for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) on the carrier’s fleet of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas aircraft.
American said it also will make changes to its line operations that maintain aircraft at airports.
It will downgrade its San Francisco line maintenance to a secondary station, close stations in Kansas City, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul and San Jose, Calif., and reduce the size of its St. Louis operations, effective in September.
American said the reductions will probably mean 490 job losses in Kansas City, 100 in San Francisco, 80 in St. Louis, 19 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, 18 in San Jose and 15 in Detroit, for a total of 722.
“Our goal with these changes,” Romano wrote, “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.”
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In a statement, Transport Workers Union official John Conley said the “deep cuts are especially painful” and don’t reflect on the “quality, skill, work ethic and professional behavior exhibited by those affected – performance is not the question.”
Conley, director of the union’s air transport division, said the union was “still hopeful that before the Kansas City facility closes late next year that industry conditions will improve and allow many of our members to find work elsewhere in the company.”
Romano, senior vice president of maintenance and engineering, said the airline will offer incentives to reduce the number of involuntary layoffs, including a $12,500 payment for people voluntarily quitting and a “stand in stead” program in which higher-seniority employees can volunteer to be furloughed.
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