Alaska Airlines has closed its jet maintenance facility in Oakland, Calif., and plans to send more work to Goodrich Corp.’s Everett plant.
The move is part of a series of cost cuts the Seattle-based airline announced Thursday.
“The sobering reality is that large-scale maintenance providers can give us the same excellent quality at a lower cost,” said Alaska’s chief executive, Bill Ayer.
A spokeswoman for Goodrich said it’s too early to say what impact the decision will have on the company’s workload in Everett. Goodrich already does maintenance work for Alaska at its Aviation Technical Services center in Everett – about one 737 a month, spokeswoman Denise Anderson said.
The airline has been sending about 60 percent of its maintenance work to Goodrich and to AAR Aircraft Services in Oklahoma City, while Alaska’s own mechanics have worked almost exclusively on the airline’s fleet of 74 Boeing 737s, which Goodrich’s Everett mechanics specialize in.
Goodrich employs about 1,600 people at its Paine Field plant, which is one of the largest jet-maintenance facilities in North America. Those people do heavy maintenance and overhauls on about 450 planes a year, the company said.
In August, the company said it was adding 90 workers to handle a surge in maintenance work. However, closing the Oakland maintenance base will eliminate jobs for about 340 airline employees, which is about a third of the job cuts Alaska is planning.
The airline said it will cut nearly 900 jobs as part of efforts to become more competitive against low-cost carriers and save up to $35 million a year.
The company, has more than 11,000 employees, said last month that it was cutting up to 150 management positions. On Thursday, it announced plans to shed another 750 jobs.
The company will close some ground operations, resulting in another 60 job cuts. And it is cutting 273 jobs in Seattle and various cities in Alaska as it begins using outside companies to clean its airplanes between flights.
Alaska said it also plans to find ways for employees at Alaska Airlines and its sister airline, Horizon, to share more work, which will eliminate jobs at both Alaska and Horizon.
And it will farm out some customer service work in the state of Alaska and close ticket offices in Juneau, Anchorage and Bellevue, Wash., among other changes.
In a memo to employees, Ayer said the changes were necessary to prevent even worse problems down the road.
“The airline industry is full of examples of inaction, with an eventual devastating toll on huge numbers of employees,” he wrote. “We must make changes now to avoid those types of drastic actions later.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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