American Airlines closes former TWA base in Kansas City (Union Betrays Members)

When American Airlines Inc. bought Trans World Airlines Inc. in 2001, one of the prime assets was TWA's enormous maintenance base in Kansas City and its team of skilled workers. But American has shrunk its workforce and its fleet significantly since then. On Friday, American closed the 53-year-old Kansas City facility. "It's really about sizing the maintenance capacity to fit the size of the airline now," American Airlines president Tom Horton said this week. "That's what it's all about." The April 2001 purchase of TWA came just as the airline industry was heading into a recession, with the decline accelerated...