Lessons Learned From Maintenance Mergers

When two airlines merge, there are some important human factors considerations for maintenance organizations. What are they? O&M put that question to Hal Heule, president of HMH Consulting, who was senior VP technical operations during the America West-US Airways merger.

Heule, who provided executive leadership for the operational integration of the two carriers, says there are three standout issues maintenance organizations should have a plan to address. Interestingly, two of those three issues—communication and training—are relevant to maintenance organizations every day, not just those undergoing a merger:

Communication. The announcement of a merger causes immediate distraction in any workplace. Technicians will ask themselves and each other: Will I have a job after the merger? Will my job change? Will I have to move? These are natural concerns, and Heule says it is important to address them head-on, repeatedly, with solid information. Otherwise, rumors and misinformation will take over and degrade job performance, increasing the likelihood of a maintenance error.

“We ratcheted up communications from the corporate level down to the manager level,” says Heule. He says he and his team were constantly on the road, asking technicians what they were thinking and reminding them to be aware of potential distractions.

Training. Heule’s biggest “lesson learned” from the America West-US Airways merger was in the area of training. “I wish we’d done more of it, and I wish we had done it better,” he says. “In some cases, we moved too fast with too much information.” If he had to do it all again, Heule says he would beef up the training department and slow down the training process, devoting more time, attention and resources to this critical area.

In particular, Heule says he regrets not carving out time to explain the reasons for the changes in procedures and technologies. By neglecting the “why,” those attending training often devoted as much energy to wondering why they needed to change as they put into learning the new material. When educating staff on a new way of doing things, trainers must win their buy-in into the “why” before they will engage with the “how.” If employees are not 100% onboard with why the new way will be better, that limits their ability to engage with the material.

Integration workload. Not surprisingly, it takes a lot of work to integrate two major airlines. Maintenance leaders cannot expect to handle the added workload and still fully perform their jobs. “Integration happens more smoothly if you have more people,” says Heule. Unfortunately, many mergers, under pressure to show quick cost synergies, eliminate personnel too swiftly. “Don’t be in a big hurry to reduce staff,” Heule warns. “You’ll need every hand on deck during the integration.”

Where there are redundancies, consider redeploying personnel to areas such as training, which need more attention. Another option is to split the workload: give one person responsibility for merger issues while another runs the day-to-day airline operations. For instance, when US Airways found itself with two heads of maintenance planning, one was made head of combined operations planning while the other was tapped to manage the maintenance operation integration.

The bottom line: every maintenance operation has its distractions, and those distractions skyrocket during a merger. Taking the time to manage communications, plan out training that addresses the “why” behind forthcoming changes, and keeping all maintenance personnel employed through the merger—even if it means assigning new, merger-related responsibilities—vastly reduces the human factors issues that can lead to error.