Misleading Press article on SQ
The article in the Straits Times today is not harmless as stated by Thermal Image in another thread. John Barnes is correct that it misleads and confuses the public in a way detrimental to the SIA staff.
Comments were invited.
Here's one sent in by a friend, I hope you have all taken the opportunity to respond.
"Attention: - Rebecca Lee Straits Times
You have invited comments on your article “An icon in the storm”
“an SIA captain typically earning between $10,000 and $19,500 a month”
Multiply this by 12 to give per year = $120,000 to $234,000 a year.
You then say “this puts them ahead of Cathay Pacific’s pilots who are said to be near the top of the scale, earning on the average $800,000 a year.”
How can you say that 120,000 to 234,000 is ahead of 800,000?
I don’t know where you obtain your figures from but here are some from the Independent Pilots Association in the UK published in Feb 2003. (Please note that the SIA figures are not from the IPA, I have repeated your figures and added some that you can easily verify) Numbers are X S$1000
In the order :-
Airline, CaptainsBasic , F/O Basic , Bond
SIA , 120 to 234, 56 to ? , 160/5yr
Virgin Atlantic , 178 to 240, 107 to 156 , 42/3yrs
Cathay Pacific , 263.5 to 376, 108 to 204.8, Nil
Easy Jet, 168 to 197, 102 to ? , 48/3yrs
These figures speak for themselves.
Please note: -
1) Virgin Atlantic Salaries compared with SIA. SIA owns 49% of Virgin Atlantic so is certainly aware of these figures.
2) We hear much of the low cost airlines driving down costs. Easy Jet is a low cost airline, the pilots are flying small 180 seat aircraft on very low revenue earning flights yet a first year Captain earns 1.4 times as much as an SIA first year B777 Captain.
3) Cathay Pacific has no bonding. SIA has a 3.8 times higher bond than Virgin Atlantic.
You may wish to ask yourself if the fact that SIA has some of the least well paid staff in the international airline business is one of the reasons that SIA is and long has been “one of the world’s most profitable airlines”.
Whilst other airlines are trying to cut staff costs, SIA, as with so many other things are already there. Further cuts are ultimately going to erode the quality of the staff that earn the airline its profits and reputation.
SIA is not loosing money because its staff cost too much. If it is, how did SIA manage to make 1.6 billion dollars a couple of years ago? It is loosing money because it is flying far fewer passengers at the moment.
The staff are earning less money already because they are flying less. Attempting to use this sad SARS situation to drive down salaries is reprehensible.
If the Company feels it must reduce salaries to help in the short term let them undertake to repay the money saved and restore salaries to present levels when they are back in profit as they surely will be. If they are not prepared to do that then the pay cuts are exposed for what they are, an attempt to drive down salaries at a difficult time for airline staff around the world using SARS as the excuse and inflated bonding of pilots to stop them leaving.
I feel your article is very misleading in terms of the figures quoted, some of which are clearly nonsense. This warrants an apology to the people of Singapore in your next edition and a revised version of your article based on fact."