Staffing Levels at different South African Airlines

[Doodlebug2]

I read with some interest a thread under Rumours and News about staffing levels at some large international carriers. Figures mentioned were British Airways 160 staff members per airframe, Iberia 130 members per airframe and American 90 members per airframe. Does anybody know if these figures include technical (groundcrew) and pilots, or just admin levels. EvanB, maybe you could enlighten us as to those levels at SAA, and anyone else at other SA airlines. I would be extremely interested to see how we fare globally!!
DB2

[evanb]

This is the real make or break factor for airlines although it is difficult to access since one can outsource lots of activities like maintenance and ground handling. SAA had about 9000 employees (got rid of 1800 in the restructuring). 53 aircraft? (9x A346, 6x A343, 6x A343, 17x B738, 11x A319, 3x 737F, 1x B744) ... 170 per airframe, not great, although they do have a big tech division that does work for other airlines!

A more accurate measure though is staff per passenger per kilometer traveled! This implicitly weights it for long haul versus short haul travel.

[kotakota]

How can you measure against airframes ?
Number of seats is the criteria.

[evanb]

Its not just about seats either, but also about how many time they are used and for how long! Thats why a weighted measure like staff per passenger per kilometer traveled which implicitly weights for long haul versus short haul travel, for larger versus smaller aircraft. However, this measure is more difficult to calculate and sometimes requires proprietary data.

[Avi8tor]

The golden rule for airlines. NEVER have more staff than seats on your aircraft. Each seat must only have 1 mouth to feed.

[mwafrika]

A more accurate measure though is staff per passenger per kilometer traveled! This implicitly weights it for long haul versus short haul travel.

evanb is partly right. I saw this stats somewhere a while back and if memory serves me correct, SAA was roughly about 130 staff per airframe. However, this is not a measure of how well an airline is doing. If your fleet is burning fuel on routes with empty seats, your staff per airframe ratio doesnt change. Staff per passenger per kilometer traveled doesn't always necessarily weight it for long haul versus short haul though, unless you are only taking into consideration staff that is directly involved with flights ie cabin crew, handlers, maintenance etc. This whole thing gets complicated but your best bet is to take a look at the financial reports which are usually available on the airline's websites. You'll get a better understanding.