American Airline's maintenance base in Tulsa to get more work

American Airlines' maintenance base in Tulsa is getting new work and this time, it's coming from a company outside of American Airlines. <br/><br/>As the News on 6 was the first to tell you, American

Tuesday, May 17th 2005, 9:15 pm

By: News On 6

American Airlines' maintenance base in Tulsa is getting new work and this time, it's coming from a company outside of American Airlines.

As the News on 6 was the first to tell you, American will do heavy maintenance work for Synergy Aerospace, which includes the national airline of Colombia, "Avianca".

News on 6 business reporter Steve Berg says this is the first big step in American's new plan to attract what they call 3rd party work. That is, work outside of American Airlines.

For most of its history, American's bases were simply meant to work on American Airlines planes. They've always wanted to be efficient, but they were never intended to turn a profit.

Now, the Tulsa base wants to be a profit center, attracting work from other airlines. This contract with the South American group is the first, significant outside work. The Tulsa base has the goal of making $500-million in profits as soon as the end of 2006.

American Airlines VP Carmine Romano: "If we achieve that, we will actually be able to provide maintenance on our airframes for free, so if we're able to achieve the $500-million goal by the end of '06, we will be able to do free maintenance on airframes for American Airlines."

This new contract doesn't mean new jobs for the Tulsa maintenance base, but it will bring in profits in the tens of millions, helping retain the jobs that are already there.