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Airline employee productivity: which airline has the hardest working staff?
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American employs the most workers per aircraft, but it also outsources less maintenance work than competitors. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
It’s always helpful when a major news organization publishes details about major carriers in a handy chart – it makes it easy to do a simple ratio. When USAToday published a brief overview of the expansion and contraction of the nation’s largest airlines, including fleet and workforce totals, it brought to mind a simple question: who does the most with the fewest number of employees? The ratio is simple: divide the number of employees (until a few years ago an airline’s largest expense until recently surpassed by fuel) by the number of aircraft (an airlines main instrument of revenue), and voila – a ration known in the industry as “Employees per Aircraft”, or a quick way of measuring employee productivity.
Of course there are caveats. Many airlines contract some jobs to other companies, reducing the number of direct employees involved in operations. Alaska Airlines notably outsources much of its ramp service to third party vendors. Delta Air Lines ramp agents are often employed by a wholly owned subsidiary. While many airlines have chosen to outsource heavy maintenance work to less expensive providers, often overseas, American Airlines still performs the bulk of its overhaul work in house, although recent cuts in maintenance staffing will eventually decrease their ratio.
Many airlines also distribute work differently. Southwest (the most productive carrier in the survey) dispenses with traditional cabin service employees who clean airplanes between flights. The job is split between flight attendants and provisioning agents who also restock galleys (a job which most other airlines themselves outsource). Southwest does, however, employ separate workgroups to do “deep cleans” of aircraft on overnight stops at larger cities. The airline also famously eschews outsourcing front line positions, with only cargo agents in select cities not directly employed by the airline.
Another item to consider is complexity. Corporate workers at United and Delta, for example must provide sales, marketing, pricing, analysis and scheduling support to a large network of regional airlines operating under the airline’s code. United may not operate its own aircraft between Denver and Palm Springs, for example, but it must still staff administration to support the capacity, although the flights are operated by SkyWest Airlines.
Caveats aside, here are the final totals for productivity among the nation’s largest airlines, presented by number of employees per aircraft:
1 Southwest 63.86
2 Air Tran 65.21
3 Jet Blue 82.30
4 US Airways 91.69
5 Alaska 93.18
6 Delta 111.98
7 Hawaiian 112.33
8 Continental 123.83
9 United 126.68
10 American 143.63
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