TULSA, Okla. — The 246-acre American Airlines facility located at the Tulsa International Airport is far from quiet.
There’s an engine shop divided up among hundreds of mechanics focused on every inch of heavy-duty engines located in aircraft like the Boeing 737. There’s a test area for engines, rev roar to ensure they are ready to go on an airplane. There’s even an area to check for leaky toilets or fix a broken seatbelt.
Just a four-hour drive from Dallas-Fort Worth, nearly 5,000 employees are working at American’s Tech Ops on North Mingo Road in Tulsa. About 3,200 of those workers are aviation maintenance technicians who keep airplanes that carry passengers reliable, especially during busy summer times of air travel and when aviation safety has been repeatedly questioned nationally.
“That’s all necessary to get from where we are to where we’re going,” said Ed Sangricco, managing director of base maintenance at American. “The people here do an amazing job.”
Reliability of aircraft is key as the industry goes through a pivotal moment in questioning aircraft safety nationally. In 2019, Boeing’s 737 Max jets were grounded after two deadly crashes. More recently, an Alaska Airlines flight on a Boeing 737 Max 9 experienced a mid-air blowout that left a gaping hole in the side of the fuselage. While conversations have risen among all of the major airlines about safety concerns, American has continued to invest in maintenance and kept it a priority.
The No. 1 priority for passengers
Safety is the facility’s No. 1 priority, according to Sangricco.
On average, about 400 airplanes a year will get a full work-up, needed replacements and general inspections for a range of parts from rudders to engines. The facility is working to make sure passengers are on the safest aircraft possible, no matter the size, age or any limiting factor that may create a challenge.
Since his own family flies on these planes and despite concerns in the industry, it’s still the safest form of air travel, he said. It’s a job with strict safety requirements that American does not take lightly, he said.
“The things that are happening, we know what’s happening with Boeing and we know what’s happening with some of the other operators, but one thing this airline takes incredibly seriously is the safety of our people, the safety of our aircraft and the performance of our fleet,” he said. “That is paramount.”
It can take a month or longer to get an aircraft like a Boeing 737-800 undergoing its six-year maintenance inspection cycle back in the air. It can be longer if there is a serious repair needed.
Commercial airplanes fly multiple legs a day, working sometimes over 20 hours in a day, depending on the schedule. At the end of the plane’s day, it’ll go back to maintenance technicians to ensure it’s kept up with before the next day’s flights.
“This is a very expensive asset to the airline and we are at the peak of the summer travel season,” Steele said. “It’s costing the airline money in here.”
Sangricco Boeing aircraft, anything from 737, 787 or 777 aircraft, are primarily maintained at the Tulsa facility, but some other aircraft types can also come in for maintenance.
American has 488 Boeing active mainline aircraft in its fleet, as of the end of last year. Most mechanics are qualified to work on all of American’s fleet types, sometimes they’ll see some of their Airbus fleet for unscheduled maintenance. In 2023, American had 965 active airplanes in its mainline fleet.
“(Maintenance) is actually the most important thing,” Sangricco said.
American CEO Robert Isom even spent time earlier this year in DFW International Airport’s maintenance hangars.
“Our AMTs across the system are the best in the industry and the work they do behind the scenes to maintain our aircraft and have them ready to fly safely each morning is world-class,” Isom wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Investing and ensuring reliability
American has spent over $400 million since 2020 to modernize the facility. The state of Oklahoma added $22 million. American said the base is the largest commercial facility of its type with 3.3 million square feet of hangar and shop space at the airport.
The big investment shows just how seriously American and its leadership have focused on reliability as it tries to gain an edge on competitors. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, American reported 74.2% on-time arrivals for the first four months of this year. Prior to the pandemic, in 2019, American reported 77.4% on-time performance for the same period. A small difference as the air carrier navigates the aftermath of the pandemic.
Sangricco said alongside the series of checks the airplane undergoes to head back out on its regular flight schedule, the work is checked by a second mechanic.
Mechanics say, “‘I want you to come look. I want you to make sure that I wired (it) properly, that I rigged it properly, that it works properly, that I did all the things properly,’” he said. “Our mechanics are very thorough. They fly on these airplanes, their families fly on these airplanes.”
Years of service and position can dictate how much a mechanic makes at American, but on average, a mechanic brings home between $80,000 to nearly $150,000 annually.
Tulsa is not the typical maintenance base for American dealing with regular issues like flat tires, broken windows or other malfunctions.. In Tulsa, it’s the heavy-duty work, which might mean gutting an entire plane at the end of its cycle.
It’s all “scheduled” work driven by time and flight cycles. Every time a plane takes off and lands is a cycle, he said. The check could be something like redoing the flooring, insulation, wiring and everything within the cabin of an aircraft.
“We bring the aircraft in,” Sangricco said. “We completely open it up. We inspect everything depending on what that check is here for. We fix all the things that we find. We put the airplane back together again.”
Then it is flown by specially trained pilots that are experts in operational issues if they arise. Some of the checks that maintenance performs can only be checked in the air, he said.
Hands-on work in Tulsa
Cracks, corrosion and other major maintenance issues are typically handled in Tulsa.
Engines are a unique part of an aircraft that require intense maintenance, all handled within a designated hangar space in the facility. About 740 employees work in American’s engine shop in Tulsa. It overhauls CFM56 engines, including the CFM56-5 and CFM56-7 engines which power American’s narrowbody fleet.
Ashraf Naqvi is the senior manager of base maintenance at American and has been with the company 34 years. His shop is divided into two sections. The hot section refers to parts that are involved with combustion within an engine. Parts that are “cold,” and aren’t necessarily dealing with fire are on another side.
“It all gets disassembled…piece by piece,” Naqvi said. “Everything is inspected, and then it’s returned back and assembled again.”
Most of the time, engines are brought in at the end of a “cycle,” or its age to be looked at and updated, like a “small hospital visit,” Naqvi compares it to. There’s no sticker price on how much an engine costs, but an estimate might be around $15 or $16 million for the ones being worked on in Tulsa.
On average, the shop sees about 34 engines a month. Boeing estimates that the aircraft in the 737 series have a lifespan of around 55,000 flight hours or 90,000 flight cycles.
After an engine undergoes overhaul, it is tested and run directly at the facility before it is flown. The mechanics flag any last-minute issues and ensure that it is ready to be flown in the air, where even more tests can be done. The plane does not go back to work at airports unless it has passed all of its checks, even for an oil leak or a filter check.
The cabin of an aircraft might appear to be straight and narrow to a passenger’s eye — seats, trays, bathrooms — but from the plane’s tail to nose and wingtip to wingtip, every floorboard, seat, piece of insulation is pulled up and revived when the plane reaches that age in its lifecycle. That lifecycle is about every six years, according to Roger Steele, a supervisor for base maintenance at American.
It’s “absolutely routine,” Steele said, stepping up to a Boeing 737-800 aircraft that was undergoing a complete workup. He said the aircraft are the “backbone” of the operation.
Steele inspects wiring that powers different parts of the plane, goes over the fuselages and even scrutinizes the very design of the aircraft so that it is strong and ready to fly. They’ll see standard problems like metal fatigue. It’s all written down and recorded.
“Everything in aircraft maintenance is rigidly documented,” Steele said.
Mechanics look at everything from air conditioning to lights and the wiring for sensors throughout the plane. Redoing insulation in an aircraft can take about four days of intensive work with eight to 10 people per work shift, he said.
But the most grueling part about ripping up a cabin might be the “wet areas,” or where the restrooms and flight attendant stations are located. These areas are more likely to experience corrosion, with spills or water from the toilets.
Those toilets are also pulled and thoroughly inspected, repaired and cleaned. Seats are also pulled to be cleaned and repaired. There’s special hoses and showers to deep clean the aircraft seats which can cost around $11,000.
Inspectors, mechanics and other crew members working on the plane are spending so much time in the airplane, often in the smothering Oklahoma summer heat, that they run massive tubes to the plane to keep cold air coming in for workers.
Tulsa’s maintenance base is undergoing some construction to continue to modernize its operation. Sangricco has a vision that includes many new hires in the next five to 10 years for his Tulsa facility.
“There’s a lot of good folks here, we have some very talented people,” Sangricco said.
The average age of workers are mid-high 50′s. Sangricco said it’s also a very generational workforce, with many grandfathers, fathers and sons working out in Tulsa at the same maintenance base. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are 137,630 aircraft mechanics and service technicians in the country.
“We have a lot of seniority, but if you don’t start looking to the future today… experience is going to be gone,” Sangricco said.
