Contract Negotiations
Boeing/IAM contract negotiations get underway on Thursday. Main issues include changes to the pension system and healthcare provisions, though look for a broader conversation about strategic direction of outsourcing. That particular point could be like nailing jell-o to a wall, each side has an idea of where the company should go strategically, and a labor negotiation is not likely to be the place to settle that debate.
A few devil’s advocate questions to ponder:
– Would Boeing want a strike on which to blame more non-labor related 787 delays?
– Even if the IAM gets what it wants in the contract (wages, pensions and healthcare), is a strike a way to make the “I told you so” point about outsourcing?
– How will SPEEA use what it learns from watching IAM’s negotiations?
September 3 is 17 days away.
More on GTF
A few more details about GTF phase one flight testing wrapping up last week that didn’t make it into my story:
– The flight test program was continuously being hammered with bad weather in the Upstate New York, Vermont and Canada area. The longest flight of the program clocked in at seven hours, which was actually a combination of two flights compressed into one because of severe thunderstorms, typical of the summer months in that part of the United States.
– The geared PW6000 engine core demonstrator was trucked to New York City from P&W’s Plattsburg test facility, flown to Paris and then trucked to Toulouse. Currently, the engine is having components reinstalled that were removed for shipping and is set for delivery to Airbus the third week of August.
– Looking past the short range applications, Pratt & Whitney speculated that a widebody application would have a fan diameter about 15-20 inches beyond the 777 and A380, making it as large as 140-150 inches in diameter. That is one HUGE engine.
Olympic Dreamliner?
The summer Olympic games have features loads of new ads from a lot of companies. United Airlines new and very “visually creative” ads were featured here in last week’s open thread. This week, GE ran an ad called “Crane” high lighting the GEnx engine. You might just recognize the plane they show in flight.
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.