Cuts at all levels at BWIA By Curtis Williams (Trinidad Express) BWIA workers were yesterday bracing themselves as confirmation came that staff at all levels of the airline would be sent home while the company seeks to survive falling passenger loads. The airline's chief executive officer Conrad Aleong said the exact number of workers to be retrenched has not been determined but he was sure they had to go if the airline was to avoid losing an estimated US$30 million in revenue during the next financial year. Aleong said BWIA had to reduce its wage bill because passenger loads had fallen 23 per cent during October and November last year, immediately after the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States and while loads were now down 12 per cent it was still unacceptable. "If anything we took too long to move to cut employee cost because the US$9 million profit we made up to the third quarter of last year was gone by November due to the fall in passengers;" Aleong told a news conference at Sunjet House, Port of Spain. While employees are to be sent home, travel agents will also feel the pinch as BWIA has decided to cut their commission by one third from nine per cent to six per cent. Aleong said: "Why should we be paying nine per cent in commission when American Airlines is paying six per cent?" Aleong said BWIA had taken all the measures possible to avoid sending home employees including seeking to reduce fuel costs, reducing the commission paid to travel agents, renegotiating ground handling agreements, making the meals more affordable and returning two MD83 aircraft which were on lease. Aleong explained: "There are certain costs which you can reduce. For example, you can send back the MD83s because with the reduced loads you no longer need them but there is so much you can do and unfortunately we have to do this now." Aleong said no one could argue that BWIA should not look at its wage bill when of the US$700,000 it spends each day $200,000 of that is spent on employees. The CEO said there were no sacred cows and he expected that from the executive management to the foreign workers would be affected by the layoffs. "We took a wage freeze last year and we asked the workers to do the same and with this fall out if there is a need to reduce the management or to cut cost in our foreign operations we will do it. There will be cost cutting across the board." Aleong said. The airline is also seeking to reduce costs by removing the ageing L10/11 from the London route and replacing it with newer cost efficient planes. What has made BWIA's situation even more difficult is that the airline cannot seek new more profitable routes in the United States because the new Piarco International Airport remained a category two airport having been recently downgraded. With respect to the intra island Tobago Express, Aleong said he expected that airline to grow and to turn a profit. Aleong revealed that BWIA was moving to purchase another aircraft to service the route. The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site: Roj (Roger James) *************************************************** Trinbago site: http://www.tntisland.com ICQ: ICQ # 15836110 ICQ Pager: mailto:15836110@pager.icq.com escape email #!1 mailto:ejames@escape.ca yahoo email #2: mailto:triniroj@yahoo.com Yahoo Pager: triniroj Caribbean Brass & Soca Connection Group on Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caribsocabrass Caribbean Brass & Soca Connection Club Website http://www.tntisland.com/caribbeansocabrassconnection/ ******************************************************* Steel Expressions Orch http://www.escape.ca/~ejames/se/ email #1: mailto:steelexpressions@yahoo.com email #2: mailto:steelexpressions@home.com ******************************************************* The Trinbago Site of the Week: (Revellers Mas Band) http://www.revellers.com/ (Trini Revellers Mas Band) courtesy of Roj Trinbago Website & TnT Web Directory Roj's Trinbago Website: http://www.tntisland.com TnT Web Directory: http://195.224.187.36/ *********************************************************