If you're out of a job or you happen to be flying a plane full of rubber duckies out of hong kong, then of course SIA is great. At face value 4 month bonus sounds good enough, but in fact 4 mth computed off a low basic pay - which is what their bonus payments are based on - only raises the bar back to a level a little closer to market rates of other majors. It's not that good, but i'll concede that it's better than none at all. Yeah yeah.... don't bring that United pension stuff out.... fact is, SIA made US$900 million profit AFTER taxes vs those Chapter 11 guys, so that comparison is a bit off the mark.
Good chance that in the following years, this kind of bonuses are gonna be done away with. They're right now stalled on Profit Sharing agreements. And i'll remind you that when the Senior Vice President of HR first came on the job a couple of years back (no need to say who sent him), one of the things i'm given to understand that he said was that "the days of high bonuses are over." Then last year, the then Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew was quoted in the press as saying that just because the airline makes a billion dollars doesn't mean that you need to be paid a bonus. Now you don't need to be a rocket scientist to put it all together to see where this is going. This 4-mth thing is probably an attempt at damage control seeing what a
PR mess they'd gotten themselves in ever since SARS in 2003.
If you wanna go, best of luck. There's a lot more for you to find out about this lot.
I know. Been there, done that.