EWRflyr

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.

OKLATEX

Who is going to replace Ream?

On Autopilot

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

cybourg10

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.

JetBlast77

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?

dojetdriver

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.

JoeyMeatballs

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

Rabid Seagull

JO might be available in 6 months.

OKLATEX

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.

JetBlast77

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.