NEWS: United Hires AAR for Maintenance

United Airlines has awarded a 5 year contract to AAR Aircraft Services to perform heavy maintenance on the carriers 737 fleet. AAR will perform the maintenance in their new facility in Indianapolis. Anybody but me get an overwhelming sense of irony in all of this. See AAR is leasing a portion of the Indianapolis maintenance facility originally built for United's maintenance division (with $300 million in public money by the way) which subsequently shut down only to contract with AAR to do maintenance at the same place...pause...breath.

But this is terrific news for Indianapolis which has been reeling from a string of airline bad news. First United Airlines closes their maintenance facility taking 1200 jobs with it and idling a $300 million dollar investment. Then home town airline ATA goes bankrupt and later drastically reduces their service taking even more jobs out of the economy. Now they get a ray of sunshine in that AAR will be adding another 200 jobs bringing their total headcount to 400. Oh yeah...its pretty good news for AAR as long as United pays the bills.