=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2004/03= /12/BUGLV5IM1B1.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, March 12, 2004 (SF Chronicle) The jumbo jet garage/Bankrupt United rehiring mechanics at huge SFO base David Armstrong, Chronicle Staff Writer After waves of layoffs in which it furloughed thousands of employees -- including 9,000 in Northern California since 2001 -- United Airlines is bringing a few of those workers back. The number of returning workers is small -- just 100 mechanics, spread over the next month or two. But it's a positive move for the bankrupt carrier, fueled by new business at United's sprawling maintenance center at San Francisco International Airport. The San Francisco Maintenance Center can become a profit center for the airline's parent company, UAL Corp., and lift its plan to emerge from Chapter 11, said Gregory Hall, senior vice president of maintenance and engineering. "We've identified areas that we are going to be specializing in here," said Hall, who recently joined United after 20 years at competitor American Airlines. "They are avionics, aircraft engines and landing gear. All of them are very high-tech and take a high degree of training and skill. This is where we can be most successful." The San Francisco Maintenance Center covers 144 acres at the edge of the bay and boasts 2.9 million square feet of operational space. It is the largest of United's five domestic repair stations and 18 foreign stations. The center has serviced United planes since it opened in 1948. But now, = as the company pushes to increase revenue, the base is doing repair work for other airlines, air cargo companies and the U.S. military. Hall referred to the outside work as "in-sourcing," but noted that United outsources some tasks it no longer wants to handle at SFO, such as heavy aircraft-body maintenance, which it sends to Mobile Aerospace, an Alabama company. Landing contracts from other companies is a competitive process, Hall said. "We compete with aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Pratt-Whitney for the high-end work," he said. Most of the center's non-United work is done for commercial clients, but longtime United customer Uncle Sam sends jet fighters there for service. Indeed, 25 percent of the work at the SFO facility is done for the Pentagon, according to United spokesman Jeff Green. "In addition to the U.S. military, our customers include Air China, Kore= an Air, Air Canada, LOT Polish Airlines, US Airways and Northwest," Green added. "Our customer base also includes FedEx and Nippon Cargo." Some of those customers are new, especially the Asian airlines. SFO's location on the Pacific Rim makes it a natural place to entice Asian airlines, whose planes are serviced here after crossing the Pacific and before returning home, said Gene House, the maintenance center's general manager. Inside, the facility is a hive of activity and near-constant motion of workers and machinery, humming and whirling under high metal ceilings. In the main building, avionics specialists hook up $250,000 black boxes, which house core electronics gear used to navigate and operate aircraft. A black box, which could cost up to $40,000 to repair, sits outside its home aircraft on a metal ledge while a technician runs tests. On the floor, neatly lined up like metal pods, aircraft engines await a technician's attention. Hall points to the circular metal blades inside an idle jet engine. "Each one of those blades costs $10,000 to make," he said. In another part of the huge facility, a jet engine mounted high above a bare concrete floor roars and shakes at the push of a touch screen prompt. The engine is being revved up to 70,000 pounds of thrust as a mechanic at a computer in a nearby sound-proof room runs a routine check-up. "We expect to service 407 engines here this year," Hall said. That's up from 370 engines in 2003, he said, and the work is expected to generate $106.5 million in revenue for the cash-strapped carrier. Inside the main hangars, mechanics and technicians clamber over the fuselage and walk out on the wings of jumbo jets parked in maintenance bays. Some of these aircraft, both Boeing and Airbus models, will be partly dismantled, then reassembled before they take to the skies again. The rise in maintenance business has enabled United to bring back the 100 furloughed mechanics, who will be drawn from the seniority list of union workers in Northern California and around the country, said Joseph Prisco, president of Local 9 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. "We'd like the number to be higher, but we are still in bankruptcy, and it's a good sign that United is bringing people back," he said. Prisco said the powerful mechanics union endorses United's strategy of specializing in high-profit business at the San Francisco center. "We do a lot of work for foreign airlines, like Air China," he said. "So= me of these airlines can't get the skills they need at home. It might cost them a bit more here, but we can do it faster and better, and the airlines love that. They can get it (an aircraft) back on wing and start making money." The recalled workers will join 5,000 workers already at the San Francisco facility. It is a rare expansion for United, which shut down maintenance centers in Indianapolis and at Oakland International Airport last year. Of 700 workers in Oakland "more than 600 employees" moved to San Francisco, Green said. The closures were cost-cutting moves for United, the nation's second- largest carrier, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2002. Since then, the airline has busily restructured, saying that it hopes to leave Chapter 11 by the end of June. UAL still hopes to land federal loan guarantees of nearly $2 billion to help it do that. Going aggressively after outside work will become a long-term practice at the San Francisco Maintenance Center, said Hall, who noted that San Francisco also won a competitive bid from UAL to paint and reconfigure seats in all the Airbus 320 aircraft for Ted, the low-cost carrier that United introduced last month. By the end of the year, 45 planes will be repainted with the Ted logo and reconfigured into economy and premium economy seats, according to Hall, accounting for 40 additional jobs in Northern California. E-mail David Armstrong at davidarmstrong@sfchronicle. com. -------------= --------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle