BY ROBERT FRANCIS
Cleaning the damage done by a bird flyby can be tough, so imagine the chore American Airlines had on its hands when it set out to refurbish an almost vacant hangar.
The maintenance hangar, located on the east side of D/FW International Airport, was abandoned by Delta Air Lines in 2005 when that airline stopped service at the airport. It sat vacant until April, when American took it over. It was, according to Danny Martinez, vice president of line maintenance for American, basically an aviary filled with birds and the accompanying “fallout.”
“It was a mess,” he said. “It took a lot of clean up.”
The 344,000-square-foot facility will be used for maintenance on American jets as well as third-party work. About 140 employees, primarily mechanics, will work at the new maintenance site, which can accommodate work on as many as eight planes at once.
“This is big for us,” Martinez said. “We feel like we can grow this business here.”
The new building will play a key role as American Airlines and the Transport Workers Union continue to solicit outside contract maintenance business, said American spokeswoman Courtney Wallace. The new facility can simultaneously accommodate several wide-body and narrow-body aircraft, she said.
“We have third-party line maintenance at D/FW, and we will do more of that with the new hangar,” Wallace said.
Martinez said the third party line maintenance is a key to the success of the new facility.
Martinez said the maintenance hangar is an asset for the company.
“We’ll make money off this facility,” he said. “We’ve done the numbers.”
American Airlines will continue to do most of its maintenance work at its Tulsa facility, Martinez said.
In other financial news for American, AMR Corp., the airline’s parent company, said on Oct. 1 that it plans to prepay $545 million in aircraft debt in the fourth quarter as part of the company’s attempt to improve its financial condition and strengthen its balance sheet.
The prepayment will probably take place toward the end of the quarter and is in addition to AMR's $1.3 billion in scheduled principal payments this year.
The payment is expected to initially eliminate around $25 million of annual net interest expenses and release 16 aircraft used to secure the loan, which has been outstanding since December 2002 and is scheduled to mature in December 2012.
“With our improving financial performance, we have bolstered our liquidity position and we have opportunistically strengthened our balance sheet by reducing debt,” said Thomas W. Horton, chief financial officer of AMR, in a release. “While we have more work to do, our recent decisions not only improve our balance sheet, but also reduce our interest burden going forward and give us more financial flexibility for the future.”
Source: FWBusinessPress.com
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