Well, that was never my experience John The cabin Crew traditionally took off in droves but the pilots stayed. Not much longer, I would think?
The idea of a 25% permanent pay cut, "To bring SIA in line with other carriers" is, of course, a very sick joke. SIA have always charged top dollar for their seats, always had enviable load factors and had, amongst the major carriers in their league, the lowest, by far, wage bill.
After a long hard struggle that was quite deliberately prolonged by the management, ALPA(S) managed to sign a CA in 2001 that was already two and a half years out of date, the basic salary scale of 2001 is still the bottom of the pile. Who, exactly, are SIA trying to reward? Hopefully not the shareholders, who, in traditional Singapore fashion, are just punters, in and out for a quick profit. Possibly the major institutional shareholders are more loyal but they have always seen SIA as Blue Chip and will never leave, they have and will always be well rewarded in the long term and are in a better position than most to understand the way a market can shift from good to not so good and back to good again.
Apart from humiliating their own workforce what do SIA expect to achieve by their Ostritch like stance? Hard to believe that they actually desire to be ridiculed within the industry now and unable to find enough pilots later? Are they really totally incapable of seeing any further than the end of their own nose?