From South Africa

[codash1099]

Not sure of the accuracy or currency of this bit, sent to me by a South African friend. If it's true, it make QF look pretty good.


Quite interesting

SAA - 5 Billion depends on their turn-around strategy

Why is SAA always running at such a huge loss and forever requesting ‘bail outs’ from the government?

The reason appears to be quite simple – they have too many people working for them and the business simply cannot afford it!

Many of these SAA employees fall into the ‘protected employees’ category, (those that simply have a job and do very little to nothing to substantiate their worth, and our Employment Act prevents the SAA from simply ‘getting rid’ of surplus or unnecessary staff.

In any business it is vitally important to keep ones staff numbers to an absolute necessary minimum. This would be in line with the principle of keeping ones overall overheads to a minimum.

I conducted a website search of some random airlines (listed below) in order to gauge the total number of employees at that airline, measured against their total number of aircraft in the fleet. I simply divided the total number of employees by the total number of aircraft in the fleet which in turn indicated how many employees in the airline are employed PER AIRCRAFT in the fleet.

It must be noted that my research was not conducted in depth and some of the numbers below reflect from 2010 – 2012.

Interestingly enough, when attempting to download SAA’s 2010 Annual Report, when clicking on it, nothing happens!

Have a look at my ‘shock and horror’ below:

1) QANTAS (Australian) 32 500 employees with a total of 252 aircraft = 129 employees per aircraft

2) American Airlines 87 897 employees with a total of 618 aircraft = 142 employees per aircraft

3) Delta Airlines 106 216 employees with a total of 722 aircraft = 147 employees per aircraft

4) British Airways 36 832 employees with a total of 238 aircraft = 154 employees per aircraft

5) United Airlines 115 149 employees with a total of 710 aircraft = 162 employees per aircraft

6) South African Airways 55 500 employees with a total of 58 aircraft = 957 employees per aircraft

Numbers above are subject to change depending on latest figures.

It is my opinion that no amount of ‘turn around’ strategy will sort SAA out! They simply need to get rid of unnecessary people and trim their business!

 

[Deewhy]

Interesting analysis, but to be fair, I'm sure the SAA staff wAges wouldn't be costing as much as QF's per person?

 

[wingspan]

Interesting way to look at it. In addition to Deewhy's comments, the revenue generated by each aircraft (and the cost of maintaining and operating each aircraft) would also be very different based on the requirements of each fleet.

 

[browski]

1. At least 800 of those SAA 987 folk are earning around $6000 per year.
2. Did you include the staff who not actually employed directly by Qantas........like Jet Connect staff?
3. I'd love to see the stats for SQ and EK.

 

[moa999]

Purely picking AR facts is just useless given:
Contractors
Subsidiaries/ JVs
Other non-aircraft businesses - eg. Holidays, Tours, Maintenance
Fleet Type - 200 747s a lot more employees than 200 Q400s

 

[Mwenenzi]

Such figures generally do not take into account services contracted out to 3rd party companies or in house contractors

SAA is somewhat similar to Qantas:- a domestic / adjacent county network with many flights 1 - 4 hrs and a few ultra long haul and a very mixed fleet. Surprised they only have 58 aircraft.

However IIRC JAL & Air Italia (?) had the same over staffing issues: look what happened to them.
In South Africa over staffing is common, but many on very low wages by Oz - Western standards.

Other data:- Facts & figures - Air Transport Action Group (ATAG)

 

[The Rok]

Suffice to say that post apartheid employment laws are somewhat different to AU laws!

You HAVE to employ, and it's virtually impossible to fire certain individuals, or more appropriately groups of individuals to SA is in a difficult predicament....

If you don't understand or have a good knowledge of RSA life then you won't really understand.

I'm sure there are Frequent Flyers here who visit SA on a regular basis and know what I'm talking about!

 

[harvyk]

As others have said, employees per aircraft is hardly a good measure, considering that it is such a flimsy measure. If company A hires my company, company B to do a job, and company B assigns the task to me, I am not an employee of company A, even though company A is in effect paying my wage. All that really means is SAA has a lot of people directly on it's books.

To get any sort of real idea, you'd need to see a cost per route type, where the comparison was not only the similar type of route, but also looked at the operating aircraft types, the expected loads, the target market, and the sort of regulatory environment which that airline is operating in. As such it is really difficult to do any sort of meaningful comparison against airlines unless both those airlines operate under the countries aviation authority and compete on similar types of routes . So for example, QF and VA can have such a comparison made, AA and SAA not so much.