The pandemic seems to finally be on its last leg as air travel has resumed to and from most countries.
In light of this, Singapore Airlines (SIA) has resumed its hiring process, aiming to hire 2,000 cabin crew members by March 2023.
In September 2020, 2,400 staff were projected to be cut due to the uncertain future from the pandemic, but less than 2,000 staff were actually laid off.
SIA was impacted much greater than airlines elsewhere in the world due the fact that it does not have domestic flights to fall back on, and hence it was in a much more vulnerable position given its flight paralysis.
Now, however, the recruitment freeze is clearly over. By the end of its current financial year (March 2023), SIA will hire 2,000 cabin crew members, with a large number being those that had previously worked with SIA, and hence need less training time.
Essentially, it would be fair to assume that many of those that were laid off earlier are being re-hired.
Preparing for the Best
Given that borders are generally open to most countries, most pilots and cabin crew have been flying again, though SIA is still not operating at full capacity given that air travel is still very much in the recovery stage.
“We have been proactive, we anticipated that things are opening up and that we want to be ahead of the curve,” said SIA chief executive Goh Choon Phong to The Sunday Times.
Hence, this bout of re-hirement is more pre-emptorary than anything, to train the cabin crew in anticipation of greater demand for air travel in the future.
“But we are deploying them so that they can all be operationally ready, and whenever we want to introduce increased frequencies or new points, we can easily step it up because the resources are already there and trained.”
This is especially since major markets, like China, still have not opened up yet, and hence there is no need to rush into working at full employment yet, especially for cabin crew.
Customer Service Shortages
Customer service, however, has been a sector of SIA operations where supply has been incapable of matching demand. Queries about air travel, especially given the complex rules and regulations depending on where one is headed to, or one is returning from, have been flooding the SIA channels.
Even though they’ve already tried to mitigate these issues, Mr Goh does recognise that there are bound to be shortcomings, especially since the surge in queries has been so high.
In short, things are definitely looking up for SIA, air travel as a whole, as well as our vacation plans. Even if everything isn’t in full swing yet, it’s predicted to be—soon enough.
In the meantime…maybe ICA can hire more people so that passports could be renewed a tad faster?
Featured Image: Vytautas Kielaitis / Shutterstock.com