Business

Thursday March 12, 2009

No-pay leave offer to SIA staff


SINGAPORE: Faced with excess staff because of its plan to ground some of its planes and cut flights, Singapore Airlines has told its more than 14,000 employees that applications are open for no-pay leave.

Staff have till the end of the month to decide whether to take up the offer to go on unpaid leave – for anything from one week to two years.

The voluntary scheme, an SIA spokesman told The Singapore Straits Times, was to “manage the surplus manpower arising from our planned capacity cuts”. He did not specify the extent of the “surplus”.

Amid a global business downturn, airlines have resorted to grounding planes, cutting routes and in some cases, shedding jobs.

In January, SIA carried 1.6 million passengers – a 10.4% drop from January last year – and filled just 74% of all seats. Last month, it announced plans to cut capacity, measured in terms of the number of seats available and total distance flown, by 11% over the coming financial year, which begins next month.

SIA has already pulled out of Amritsar in India. It will withdraw from Vancouver in Canada soon, and trim flights to most markets. Frequency has also been reduced on its non-stop all-business class flights to New York City and Los Angeles.

It will also take 17 aircraft from its fleet of just over 100 planes out of service for at least a year.

Over half of SIA’s staff – 7,300 people – are cabin crew. With the flight cuts, there could be as many as 400 to 500 stewards and stewardesses twiddling their thumbs on the ground every month.

This is believed to be the first time such a scheme has been introduced company-wide, and comes about two months after SIA’s cargo arm, SIA Cargo, made a similar request of its pilots.


For another perspective from The Straits Times, a partner of Asia News Network, click here.


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