XJT CEO leaving to be VP at AA
 

American Airlines Names ExpressJet CEO James Ream as Senior Vice President for Maintenance & Engineering

Longtime AA Executive Carmine Romano to Retire after 41 Years

FORT WORTH, Texas, Dec. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- American Airlines today announced that James Ream, President and CEO of ExpressJet, will become American's Senior Vice President of Maintenance & Engineering, effective Jan. 1. Ream succeeds Carmine Romano, who is retiring after 41 years with American Airlines.

Ream will oversee all of American's maintenance operations worldwide, including its major repair, overhaul and modification bases in Fort Worth, Texas, Tulsa, Okla., and Kansas City, Mo. This includes the more than 12,000 American Airlines maintenance employees who support a fleet of more than 600 aircraft.


During the past eight years, Ream has led ExpressJet, a company with 244 aircraft flying under the Continental Express brand, as well as corporate and charter flights. Prior to that, he spent seven years at Continental Airlines, where he served as President and Chief Operating Officer for Continental Express Airlines. In a previous stint at American Airlines, between 1987 and 1995, Ream worked in various positions of increasing responsibility in the corporate purchasing, financial planning, capital planning, and finance groups.


Ream's aviation career began with his time serving in the U.S. Army as a helicopter mechanic and crew chief. He earned an associate of science degree in Aviation Maintenance and holds FAA certificates as an Airframe & Powerplant mechanic and private pilot. He also holds a bachelor of science degree in Operations Management from San Diego State University and a master's in Business Administration from Northwestern University.


Carmine Romano began his AA career as a line mechanic in New York and concluded it as the airline's top Maintenance & Engineering executive. Along the way, he worked as an aircraft maintenance technician, a production supervisor on widebody products, a production manager on Boeing 747s and DC-10s, a product manager for MD-80s, Managing Director over Fokker 100 maintenance and later other aircraft types, and Vice President for Base Maintenance before being named to his current position in 2007.


"Carmine has played a major role in establishing American Airlines as a leader in airline maintenance operations and engineering," said Gerard Arpey, American's Chairman and CEO. "His hard work, leadership, and commitment to continuous improvement have made us a better, more effective airline. Moreover, his devotion to our company and its people have helped us buck the industry trend of outsourcing maintenance to other countries and keep thousands of maintenance jobs in the United States. I know I speak for the entire company in thanking Carmine for his important contributions to our airline and wishing him the best in his retirement."


"While Carmine's shoes will be hard to fill, we are pleased to have an executive of Jim Ream's caliber returning to our team," Arpey added.

Who is going to replace Ream?

Ream was hilarious at XJet, if you ever went to the company indoc, you know what I'm talking about. :D

A current board member, Pat Kelly, will take over for 6 months until the board can find a long term replacement. Ironically Kelly used to work at AMR, and in his last CFO gig his company merged with another. Kelly has no CEO experience prior to this job.

is this a good or bad sign for expressjet? I'd imagine things are in decent shape there now after securing 32 more aircraft worth of flying. Whats the word guys?

It depends on how you interpret "secure". 11 planes on a "long term" 2 year, 11 on a "long term" 3 year, the rest on a "temporary basis. Also, it is a deal with UAL, look at their track record of cycling regional providers.

I like Ream and have met him 5+ times or so. He is an Ops guys, not a bean counter and that's (IMO) who you want running an airline. As far as indoc, I dunno, I mean the F-bombs were funny the first time but then it almost seemed like he did it because he thought thats the only way we could relate to him, as if we were a bunch of blue collar workers with a GED......

As far as what the future hold I am not sure..........

whats the quote, "the evil you know is better than the evil you don't know". Reak was'nt evil but you get the point

JO might be available in 6 months.:eek:

We/They already had Johnny O, he was there in the Mid 1990s when it was Continental Express, I believe he was the one that placed the order for the 1900s.

I never knew what to think of Ream. I had to agree that he was an ops guy which was nice and I think he did a good job in that respect. But when they first started the IPO and turned us into ExpressJet, I never could buy what he was selling regarding the future plans. I think his biggest mistake was trying the branded flying deal, I think the best thing he did for ExpressJet though the contract flying.

What do I know, to me it will always be COEX.

One thing a lot of people don't realize with Branded is there is not a lot they could have done. CAL came to XJT and exercised their right to remove the first 69 aircraft. If XJT would not have kept them, CAL planned to give them all to CHQ and other providers and to continue to remove 69 aircraft until ExpressJet was no more. Ream HAD to keep the aircraft and do something, anything, with them to keep this from happening. Yes, they lost a ton of money with branded but it was either that or go TU a few years later.

Plus Branded wasn't the total disaster many people made it out to be. Fuel costs killed it plus the fact that there was probably pressure from Continental (we were using their airplanes, after all). The last month of flying was also the most popular with something like +80% load factors. Ticket prices were steadily climbing too.

Being from California I got to hear a lot about what people thought about ExpressJet and it was nothing but positives. Word of mouth was just beginning to get serious momentum about the same time they were forced to shut it down. Would it have really had a chance if fuel stayed low? Hard to say, but just saying the product bombed is not really telling the whole story.

I'll second that

Branded would have been profitable in 2008 if fuel had stayed at or under $100, that is what I was told in recurrent from a VP. They planned to lose money on it for 2-3 years, they just could not keep it going with oil at $140. It exceeded everyone's expectations.

I don't think it can really be said what would or would not have happened.

An alternate scenario would have been this;

69 airplanes given up, THEN when the time came to reduce again per the prior CPA, XJT gets forced into signing the same (or similar) type CPA they got forced into last year, with the language of 205 aircraft, with the option to take them down to 190 per the written timeline.

I owe the fact that i have a job to the man. The music stopped and i am stuck at a decent regional vs being unemployed or at a crappy regional. In my indoc he came in and everyone asked "what will you do if we lose the 69 airplanes? will we park those airplanes?" and his response was "we dont park **** around here."

He started as a mechanic and from his business decisions he is no wimp. You can knock him all you want for what happened to XJT but i think a lot of it was inevitable. He could have sat behind his desk and walked away from a bankrupt company with his bonus. he took a lot of flak from inside and outside his company all while retaining the respect of his employees.

x2......... (except that I'm furloughed, but I still agree)

I was one of the unfortunate furloughees and I can say I have no regrets over coming to XJT. It's a class act and Ream impressed me from day one with how he ran the show. Considering that the deck was stacked against the company from the get-go it was the boldness of the company that kept it from just getting pushed under the rug by Continental. Through risky maneuvers like keeping the 69 planes and doing branded and short term contracts they got the United flying. Instead of the newest and most capable XRs and LR2s all Continental got back was the creaky old E-135s that we didn't want anyway (and Republic can enjoy losing money with them on Midwest now).

Anyway I've worked at a lot of places and I haven't respected any company as much as XJT. I'd love to come back some day.

unfortunately i dont know if it will be the same company with different management. If you compare how we are treated vs how other regionals are being treated... it is amazing to think they are in the same category of companies.

I did dis-like the fact that Ream openly took jabs at Kellner. I think kellner is about as useful as tits on a bull but for Ream to say "well i havent called him an ... to his face yet" is a bit on the dumb side. We would have been man handled by CAL probably the same way but still it left a lingering question behind that i cant answer.

LOL Now that's funny right thar I don't care who you are!! Hey if you look at the size of Kellners' head, it does lok like a huge a.. that's balding.

Guys. I wasn't knocking the branded flying as a product. I heard good things about it too from those that flew on it, and I wish I could have tried it out.

What I was trying to say is that, early on during the IPO, I never believed in his grand plans going forward regarding such things as branded flying that he mentioned even then. The economics of the 50 seat jets just don't allow it, as a stand alone product. I think they had a niche product, much like Allegiant has a niche product. Would branded have made it through the recession if it survived the fuel spike, who knows.

To me that, whole IPO thing was odd. Obviously a business deal and that is that. Ream is obviously a good ops guy. AA thinks so, and so did CAL as he ran Micronesia and Express well. To me though, while I liked him as an ops guy, I just could never rally behind the guy. I left though about a year before CAL pulled the airplanes, so I was more in the transition, and thats maybe why.

ExpressJet had a great attempt at branded, and I think it is something that the employees should be very proud of. It is a great place to work, and I enjoyed my entire time there, and I hope for all of you, that it continues. Take pride that it is such a good place.

I smell a merger or buyout maybe I should get my app in at the NEW REPUBLIC or Skywest.

Nothing has changed since the last attempt they would still have to merge the lists and Skywest did not want to do that.

Yeah some of you guys forget that a simple buyout or merger scenario involving XJT would require that acquiring company to merge (not staple) the seniority list as per the XJT ALPA CBA. SkyWest wanted us to waive that right, we politely said no thanks :)

why would anyone buy a company like xjt... for the contract with CAL?

There is no incentive to pay for a senior and expensive work force, a contract that will be put out to bid in 5 years, and lots of overhead. We wont dissappear and will probably exist in 10 years but we could be a fraction of our former self in numbers.