Possible retrenchments at SINGAPORE AIR..
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Possible retrenchments at SINGAPORE AIR..
Singapore Air considers unpaid leave for pilots - report
Posted On: 03 Jan 2009
Singapore Airlines may ask pilots from its cargo arm to take unpaid leave in a bid to cut costs and reduce capacity, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Singapore Air told the Business Times it was already in talks with cargo fleet pilots about using the cost cutting moves as a way to avoid retrenchments.
"The cargo business position is very weak at this point in time and the outlook for 2009 is not good," Singapore Air spokesman Stephen Forshaw told the paper.
Pay cuts and retrenchments could follow if the voluntary unpaid leave scheme failed to reduce costs, Forshaw added. The airline is also looking to park some of its cargo aircraft.
Singapore Airlines Cargo has a pool of about 300 pilots.
Singapore Air filled 67.3 percent of the space available on its planes for passengers and cargo in November, down from 70.6 percent a year ago, the airline reported this month.
Wires
Posted On: 03 Jan 2009
Singapore Airlines may ask pilots from its cargo arm to take unpaid leave in a bid to cut costs and reduce capacity, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Singapore Air told the Business Times it was already in talks with cargo fleet pilots about using the cost cutting moves as a way to avoid retrenchments.
"The cargo business position is very weak at this point in time and the outlook for 2009 is not good," Singapore Air spokesman Stephen Forshaw told the paper.
Pay cuts and retrenchments could follow if the voluntary unpaid leave scheme failed to reduce costs, Forshaw added. The airline is also looking to park some of its cargo aircraft.
Singapore Airlines Cargo has a pool of about 300 pilots.
Singapore Air filled 67.3 percent of the space available on its planes for passengers and cargo in November, down from 70.6 percent a year ago, the airline reported this month.
Wires
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Air cargo traffic hits seven-year low
Article from: AAPGeoff Easdown
December 31, 2008 12:59pm
WORLD trade has continued to fall, with new data showing that air cargo traffic plunged 13.5 per cent in November, the worst month in seven years for freight handlers.
The Asia-Pacific was hit hardest, with airlines reporting a huge 16.9 per cent fall in freight volumes despatched from Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysian factories.
The International Air Transport Association, the body that represents all major airlines, warned that the dificulties caused by the global economic downturn were likely to continue.
"Plummeting business confidence and the continuing turmoil in financial markets indicates that the worsening trend will be continued in December,'' IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani said today.
Summing up the outcome, Mr Bisignani described the 13.5 per cent fall as nothing less than "shocking."
"Asia-Pacific airlines carry 44.6 per cent of global freight and fourth quarter revenues from those airlines will be disproportionally and negactively impacted,'' he said.
November's double-digit freight declines were also reported by Latin American carriers, down 15.7 per cent; North American carriers down 14.4 per cent and European airlines reported an average 11 per cent fall.
Mr Bisginani said the figures showed clearly the rapid fall in global trade and the broadening impact of the economic slowdown, the largest since 2001 when airlines suffered falling passenger and freight loads after September 11.
Passenger traffic fell worldwide during November with bookings down 4.6 per cent and load factors were near break-even, down 3 per cent on the same month in 2007, at 72.7 per cent.
Mr Bisignani said the airline industry was shrinking and the 1 per cent cut in fleet capacity in November could not keep pace with the 4.6 per cent fall in passenger demand.
"We can expect deep losses in the fourth quarter'', Bisignani warned.
Article from: AAPGeoff Easdown
December 31, 2008 12:59pm
WORLD trade has continued to fall, with new data showing that air cargo traffic plunged 13.5 per cent in November, the worst month in seven years for freight handlers.
The Asia-Pacific was hit hardest, with airlines reporting a huge 16.9 per cent fall in freight volumes despatched from Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysian factories.
The International Air Transport Association, the body that represents all major airlines, warned that the dificulties caused by the global economic downturn were likely to continue.
"Plummeting business confidence and the continuing turmoil in financial markets indicates that the worsening trend will be continued in December,'' IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani said today.
Summing up the outcome, Mr Bisignani described the 13.5 per cent fall as nothing less than "shocking."
"Asia-Pacific airlines carry 44.6 per cent of global freight and fourth quarter revenues from those airlines will be disproportionally and negactively impacted,'' he said.
November's double-digit freight declines were also reported by Latin American carriers, down 15.7 per cent; North American carriers down 14.4 per cent and European airlines reported an average 11 per cent fall.
Mr Bisginani said the figures showed clearly the rapid fall in global trade and the broadening impact of the economic slowdown, the largest since 2001 when airlines suffered falling passenger and freight loads after September 11.
Passenger traffic fell worldwide during November with bookings down 4.6 per cent and load factors were near break-even, down 3 per cent on the same month in 2007, at 72.7 per cent.
Mr Bisignani said the airline industry was shrinking and the 1 per cent cut in fleet capacity in November could not keep pace with the 4.6 per cent fall in passenger demand.
"We can expect deep losses in the fourth quarter'', Bisignani warned.
Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
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Not sure how much I would trust the Business Times, particularly when they refer to a non existent airline like "Singapore Air", who are they?
Sadly I do believe that SIA Cargo are looking at unpaid leave in order to avoid redundancies.
Sadly I do believe that SIA Cargo are looking at unpaid leave in order to avoid redundancies.
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It is going to be a tough year, we are parking up 3 BCFs this month at Victorville. The KA MAN base is being closed. The classics are being retired. Freight traffic is 40% down and that is during the Christmas "rush". 70 flights through DXB in January cancelled already.
I cannot see it improving anytime soon, see gloomy article on Asian manufacturing:
Asia needs to fully wake up to the scale of the West's economic crisis - Telegraph
I cannot see it improving anytime soon, see gloomy article on Asian manufacturing:
Asia needs to fully wake up to the scale of the West's economic crisis - Telegraph
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Seniority list
As far as I can see, the bottom two thirds of the last 600 on the CX seniority list are F/O's and Captains. Maybe the DFO can solve his S/O bypass pay and excess crew numbers by cutting those that shouldn't be here...........
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the guys at the bottom of the CX list consist of 80 ex KA guys, (35 skippers), & mainly DEFOs from North America. Great that the senior guys may be taking unpaid leave to preserve guys you've never met.
If you did meet them, you might feel a tad less generous
If you did meet them, you might feel a tad less generous
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Great that the senior guys may be taking unpaid leave to preserve guys you've never met.
When are "we' going learn to start blaming the Management and not "our" fellow pilots?
When are "we' going learn to start blaming the Management and not "our" fellow pilots?
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Yes...and didn't the KA guys get nothing that some stranger off the streets to HK would also have got? Don't let these facts get in the way of trevfly and his lack of emotional control.
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On the other hand.......
From the FT:
Pared down airlines plot course back to profitability
By Justin Baer in New York
Published: January 4 2009 17:16 | Last updated: January 4 2009 17:16
Few decisions have been more perplexing for airline executives than weighing how many aeroplanes to fly but veteran executives argue the industry has had an unlikely ally: $147-a-barrel oil.
The unprecedented surge in oil prices, which peaked in July, gave carriers little choice but to retire dozens of older, less efficient aircraft. Ed Bastian, president of Delta Air Lines, predicted recently that 2009 industrywide domestic capacity will be 14 per cent below where it was last year.
A stunning reversal in fuel costs, capacity cuts and a spate of new passenger fees are expected to return US airlines to profitability in 2009 even as the industry confronts what may be the steepest downturn in its history.
“What’s happened is that this time around the existence of excessive fuel prices probably led airlines to be better prepared than they’ve ever been before,” Herb Kelleher, the co-founder and former chief executive of Southwest Airlines, told the FT last year.
The unfolding credit crisis has made financing new aeroplane purchases much more expensive for established carriers, and all but impossible for a new wave of start-up airlines to invade less crowded routes.
“You would think the experiences of the past several years would damp enthusiasm of investors for start-ups,” said Dan Garton, an executive vice-president at American Airlines.
Some industry observers wonder how long airlines can remained disciplined once they return to profitability and the capital markets reopen to big airlines and newcomers alike. The capacity cuts will flood the market with older yet still serviceable aircraft, lowering the costs for newcomers looking to buy or lease a fleet.
“It’s everyone’s fear,” said Bill Swelbar, a research engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s International Center for Air Transportation. “All it takes is for one guy to break.”
Capacity cuts have rarely lasted very long. Only once since the industry’s deregulation in 1978 have US airlines reduced the number of available seat miles – aeroplane seats, multiplied by the number of miles flown, is the industry’s basic measure of capacity – in consecutive years. That was 2001-02, when the airlines confronted both the 9-11 terrorist attacks and a recession.
Steady growth in demand for air travel and the relative ease in which entrepreneurs could start new carriers had created a volatile, brutally competitive industry that made sustained stability, let alone profitability, as elusive as a comfortable middle seat.
It has been, as billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote in his 2007 annual report: “the worst sort of business”, one that demands a lot of capital [aeroplanes remain big-ticket items], with little or no profit to return to shareholders.
But that was then. “The industry has historically been very focused on placing massive orders for aeroplanes with perhaps not clear economics,” said Richard Anderson, Delta’s chief executive. “And we’re not going to do that.”
Pared down airlines plot course back to profitability
By Justin Baer in New York
Published: January 4 2009 17:16 | Last updated: January 4 2009 17:16
Few decisions have been more perplexing for airline executives than weighing how many aeroplanes to fly but veteran executives argue the industry has had an unlikely ally: $147-a-barrel oil.
The unprecedented surge in oil prices, which peaked in July, gave carriers little choice but to retire dozens of older, less efficient aircraft. Ed Bastian, president of Delta Air Lines, predicted recently that 2009 industrywide domestic capacity will be 14 per cent below where it was last year.
A stunning reversal in fuel costs, capacity cuts and a spate of new passenger fees are expected to return US airlines to profitability in 2009 even as the industry confronts what may be the steepest downturn in its history.
“What’s happened is that this time around the existence of excessive fuel prices probably led airlines to be better prepared than they’ve ever been before,” Herb Kelleher, the co-founder and former chief executive of Southwest Airlines, told the FT last year.
The unfolding credit crisis has made financing new aeroplane purchases much more expensive for established carriers, and all but impossible for a new wave of start-up airlines to invade less crowded routes.
“You would think the experiences of the past several years would damp enthusiasm of investors for start-ups,” said Dan Garton, an executive vice-president at American Airlines.
Some industry observers wonder how long airlines can remained disciplined once they return to profitability and the capital markets reopen to big airlines and newcomers alike. The capacity cuts will flood the market with older yet still serviceable aircraft, lowering the costs for newcomers looking to buy or lease a fleet.
“It’s everyone’s fear,” said Bill Swelbar, a research engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s International Center for Air Transportation. “All it takes is for one guy to break.”
Capacity cuts have rarely lasted very long. Only once since the industry’s deregulation in 1978 have US airlines reduced the number of available seat miles – aeroplane seats, multiplied by the number of miles flown, is the industry’s basic measure of capacity – in consecutive years. That was 2001-02, when the airlines confronted both the 9-11 terrorist attacks and a recession.
Steady growth in demand for air travel and the relative ease in which entrepreneurs could start new carriers had created a volatile, brutally competitive industry that made sustained stability, let alone profitability, as elusive as a comfortable middle seat.
It has been, as billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote in his 2007 annual report: “the worst sort of business”, one that demands a lot of capital [aeroplanes remain big-ticket items], with little or no profit to return to shareholders.
But that was then. “The industry has historically been very focused on placing massive orders for aeroplanes with perhaps not clear economics,” said Richard Anderson, Delta’s chief executive. “And we’re not going to do that.”
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Major lay-offs?
I heard on the grapevine (and I must say in all unambiguity, it's a RUMOUR, I don't know whether it's substantiated) that Singapore are about to lay off a huge chunk of expat pilots. Can any Singaporean confirm whether there is truth in this??
Thanks,
KK
Thanks,
KK
