Less staff but more planes for BWIA By Juhel Browne (Trinidad Guardian) While Conrad Aleong, BWIA chief executive officer was advising employees of staff cuts, he also announced the arrival of two new aircraft that could cost the company TT$1 billion. Last month, BWIA strongly denied it had purchased any A340-300s as was reported by the International Lease Finance Corporation on its Web site in January. The Aviation, Communication & Allied Workers Union responded that the purchase of any new aircraft at this time would be premature and unnecessary. BWIA, at the time ,would only admit that the airline was actively pursuing the acquisition of new aircraft to replace its ageing Lockheed L1011-500 Tristars. The airline also intends to retire its McDonnell-Douglas MD 83s. However, in a March 1 release to staff, Aleong, while warning employees staff redundancies had to be implemented to ensure its survival, announced they will be taking delivery of one A340-300 in June and a second in December. The 181 staff positions to be made redundant were officially announced at a news briefing on Friday by Frank Sampson, BWIA vice president. Aleong, who was not present, explained in a release the day before, that the 181 jobs did not mean 181 people would be out of work. "Some 40 positions are vacant and another 14 jobs will involve non-permanent, contract employees who were hired in 1999 to bridge the gap until the L-1011s are replaced," he said. He said the time had come to trim the manpower because, "we do not have a fairy godmother to inject new cash to cover our losses as some other regional carriers seem to have. We have to save ourselves, and we do have the capability, provided we do the prudent things as required by the changed industry environment in which we find ourselves." The staff cuts are in direct response to the fallout from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Aleong said if they did not act now, greater numbers will be required to go in the future. VSEP and early retirement packages have been offered to minimise the impact of the redundancies. The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site: Roj (Roger James) *************************************************** ICQ Pager: mailto:15836110@pager.icq.com escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca yahoo email: mailto:triniroj@yahoo.com Trinbago site: http://www.tntisland.com CBSC Group on Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caribsocabrass CBSC 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: (Flowerline) http://www.flowerlinetnt.com (Flowerline Florist) courtesy of Roj Trinbago Website & TnT Web Directory Roj's Trinbago Website: http://www.tntisland.com TnT Web Directory: http://195.224.187.36/ *********************************************************