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Aviation History
1983
1983 - 0084.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT More cuts at BA LONDON Up to 500 senior managers in British Airways earning between 1114,000 and £20,000 a year look set to face redun dancy within the next three months. This plan is the latest of chairman Sir -John King's cost-cutting measures to get British Airways' workforce reduced from its current 40,000 to 35,000. A spokesman for BA says: "We are determined to reach a total of 35,000 employees by the end of March this year. This will give us a properly balanced airline carrying the volume of traffic we expect. All departments and levels of staff are expected to make their contributions." British Airways' manage ment has so far been reduced by just 10 per cent while many other grades of the airline's workforce have been axed by 40 per cent since Sir -John King became chairman in February 1981. The carrier has 2,000 top managers involved in such jobs as plan ning route schedules, looking after overseas bases and day- to-dav operations. If this 2,000 is reduced by 500 in addition to the 10 per cenl that have already left then management will face an overall reduction of 40 per cent also. Even with 500 senior managers released the airline still has to make 4,500 staff redundant by the end of March from "all levels". Inevitably there will be re ductions in the number of pilots BA employs. British Airways says it has 230 sur plus pilots and 2,000 who are working normally. Flight understands that BA's ideal "complete crew"/aircraft ratio over the entire fleet is 5.2, but has calculated that by the end of this year (if pilot numbers employed remain the same), the ratio will be 5.84. This, in cluding the 230 pilots given as surplus, means that pilot strength is 452 above the ideal. In coming to this conclu sion Flight has assumed a to tal fleet of 153 aircraft, which includes six Boeing 757s but eliminates the six TriStar 500s which the RAF has bought. Allowance has also been made for the fact that Tridents, some TriStars, and some Boeing 747s operate using three pilots per crew. A British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) spokes man, presented with these calculations, says that the 5.2 ratio is "rubbish", and that most airlines operate with crew/aircraft ratios of be tween six and nine. A more relevant figure anyway, claims the Balpa spokesman, is the ratio of individual air crew to the rest of the airline staff. In this respect, Balpa claims, BA has the lowest ratio of all lata-member air lines except Iberia and KLM. Flight has been unable to jus tify this claim. Flight's BA "mole" says that the carrier's average pilot earns £19,000, which puts the pilots squarely in the income bracket of the executives whose numbers BA is trying to trim. Air Niugini forecasts 1982 profit PORT MORESBY Air Niugini "is hopeful of a profit for 1982". having pro duced a net profit the previous year of nearly $600,000. And with management assistance from KLM Royal Dutch Air lines starting on February 1 this year, 1983 may give further improvements. Air Niugini's general man ager Joe Tauvasa says that the three-year contract with KLM whereby four executives from Holland take up positions within the airline will "not be a management replacement exercise". Tauvasa adds that "Air Niugini will remain un changed operationally", and that he believes that "working alongside people who have worldwide experience will give us a broader perspective of managing all the aspects of airline operations". The four seconded Dutch executives will be backed up by "a number of experts from KLM who will come to Port Moresby on an ad hoc basis for short visists to tackle The tenth A310 and the first to be delivered to Dutch carrier KLM is seen on the final assembly line at Toulouse. KLM will accept the aircraft in April certain areas, some of which have yet to be designated". One of the KLM team, the Dutch airline's present operations director Leendert Van Rijswijk, will become deputy general manager at Air Niugini. Within three months of arrival the KLM team will provide a workplan and a comprehensive training pro gramme which will be drawn up in consultation with Tauvasa, then submitted to the National Airline Commis sion for approval. Commuter buyers state priorities WASHINGTON D.C. According to the US Inter national Trade Commission, buyers are not strongly influ enced by financing subsidies offered by overseas suppliers of small transport aircraft. In fact, says the ITC in a study prepared for Congress, commuter airline buyers said that financing terms ranked tenth in a list of factors that influenced decisions on which aircraft to buy. Most important to the buy ers of small commuter planes were passenger capacity and fuel efficiency, the ITC study reported. The study, titled "Economic impact of foreign export credit subsidies on the US commuter aircraft industry", was requested by the Senate Finance Commit tee last summer. Data was collected by the ITC in questionaires sent to the US commuter airline in dustry. Detailed replies were not revealed in the published report, in order to maintain confidentiality for the re spondents. According to the study, for eign manufacturers of com muter aircraft "have more widely adopted seller fi nancing than domestic producers". Until 1979, the study said, the US Government was the main source of loan guaran tees for aircraft purchases made by the commuter air lines. By 1980 and 1981, "foreign governments were as signifi cant a source of guarantees as was the US Government". Short haul... The US Civil Aeronautics Board has reached another milestone in its progress to wards its "sunset". On Jan uary 1 as mandated by law, the CAB lost its authority over domestic air fares and rates. Now with the Board out of the regulatory picture, it will be up to the ticket buyer to read the fine print on the ticket "contract" and later sue if it isn't followed. FLIGHT international. 15 January 19H3 ,
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