Observers have pointed to a particularly bad crash it suffered when landing at Cairo International Airport in 2001 while operated by MEA. "Very often, the airline was asking for Egyptian airline engineers to fix its frequent technical problems," the worker said.
But Dave 1 and P-Thugg took it seriously enough to meet with the airline's engineers and venture capitalists, and ended up thinking the partnership "made total sense.
Walter Taylor, a Delta manager, says that the engineers have so much time left over that they boost their productivity by doing more "in-sourcing" (ie, fixing other airlines' engines).
Includes: First officers of airlines, flight engineers, flying instructors, helicopter pilots.
He was also the head of the Iraqi airline pilots' and engineers' union.
Airline companies employ engineers as performance analysts, crash investigators, and consultants.
The group defined blue collar as people who were represented by unions or who were paid by the hour -- a definition that turns such unlikely workers as unionized athletes, airline pilots, aerospace engineers and even some newspaper reporters into blue-collar workers.
They, in turn, will become airline pilots, aeronautical engineers, air traffic controllers, aircraft mechanics.
But an engineer of airline deregulation, Alfred E. Kahn, a professor of political economy at Cornell University, disagrees.
The airline's pilots and engineers have already accepted austerity measures; cabin staff, notified of the proposed changes in July, are less inclined to compromise (though some have taken voluntary redundancy).
