So I was reading a Malaysian Insider article about MAS and her financial woes.
And of course, after the article, comes a barrage of comments about how MAS should cut down on staff wages and the "free" airline ticket that staff and their dependents are allocated annually.
Comments that particularly irked me because of how patently ignorant they were include:
"How can MAS improve its financial standing when the staff have no direction and focus to make a turnaround? Get rid of politics within the airline and crack the whip and make the staff work for their salary."
-someone who calls himself "Fairplay Lee"
"MAS staff are being highly overpaid. come on. just retrench them.
and the free flight tickets to all staff + families. that is a waste too. company can save up to RM100 million if they scrap that thing off."
-someone who calls himself "anakmuda"
Now I begin my rebuttals with fair allowance that I am probably biased. But only a little bit. And only by default because I happen to benefit from annual privilege travel. But the rest of my exposition I hope you agree comes from a sound and objective mind.
1) On "earning wages, and cracking the whip":
1a) Relatively, pilots earn a lot. That is true. But the pay, as commonly scaled, is justified by mainly two things a) occupational hazard, b) the cost of training, and c) demand versus supply.
Anybody who cracks jokes about how pilots just put the flight on auto and read the newspaper for the rest of the flight (mostly the pilots themselves I guess) should remember that when the shit hits the ceiling, you do not want to leave your life in the hands of a computer.
If anything, the autopilot is a necessary flexibility for pilots who have to work at 8-14 hour stretches under constantly threatened and volatile conditions.
If you are anything like me and a nervous flier, any bit of turbulence is sure to make your palms sweaty and make your mouth automatically muttering prayers just in case you beat the statistical odds and end up being in a tragic flight. Imagine if you are the one who actually has DO something about the turbulence. And that is where the demand versus supply comes in. NOT MANY PEOPLE CAN DO THIS JOB, yet almost everybody flies.
Fairplay Lee would also do good to google up the Hudson river plane crash which could have easily have resulted into a fatal accident had the pilots not performed to the max of their capabilities. Of course such flights rarely occur. But the average flight itself is always cruising in a path of torrent and potential catastrophes which, properly managed by skilled pilots, do not manifest into incidents or accidents.
Fairplay Lee says that pilots are sleeping on the job or have no direction. But their roles are literally to fly the plane from point A to point B safely. And I think Malaysia Airline pilots are renowned for their standards of giving a smooth and safe flight. However, what is the standard and what seems easy (because you do not hear about MAS incidents in the news), is not easy.
I worry about my husband's safety with each flight he takes. Especially after I had the opportunity to sit in a cockpit and observe how many ways a flight can go wrong I thank my lucky stars my job is no where near as crucial as his. I would just pee in my pants at the first sight of thunder. And he has flown in between cyclones while passengers are sobbing over the ending of The Notebook.
However, let us look at the job description of people whose salaries amount to rm4 million per annum, or a hefty hundreds of thousands montly.
So let us be reasonable when we make our judgments. If a company does well, you salute management for their foresight and planning and downstream staff for rising to the visions of management. If a company does poorly, you blame management because they do not give a chance for other staff to excel at their work.
1b) On the note of getting paid a lot, pilots are also taxed very heavily as well. At present, a higher earning First Officer gets rm17k, but sees only rm13k of it That is an rm4k monthly tax. Which is equivalent to the starting salary at a high paying private company. And all of which feeds back into the government's piggy bank. But businessmen who earn twice as much, and assuming are clever in how they portray their income, rarely get taxed as much.
1c) Pilots in Malaysia Airlines get paid a lot less than their peers in other airlines. Despite the fact that non-concessional fares for the airline tickets are comparable to some of the most expensive flights in the market. If you have taken a Malaysia Airlines flight recently, you will notice that it is rarely an empty flight, and more often than not it is a good 3/4ths full and a good chance overbooked. So they are doing reasonable amount of business, certainly comparable to many airlines-- yet they are losing billions.
1d) Regardless of the pay, I agree that people should earn their wages. I however firmly believe my husband and his colleagues earn their keep. My husband's roster is nearing 79hours of work this month- including on Hari Raya. Purely on an hours basis (barring technical difficulty of task, like flying in the middle of the night and being rostered to work during buka puasa) if that does not constitute earning deserved wages, I do not what is.
But if you want to make a more informed judgment about whether or not higher ladder staff do, you can read posts from MP Wee Choo Keong's blog and decide for yourself.
2) On "highly overpaid, retrenchment, and scrapping free flights for staff and families":
2a) I think I have written enough about pilot wages. But I think I should reiterate again that Malaysia Airlines staff if anything, are not being paid as well as their peers in other airlines. Be they pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, or administrative staff.
Anakmuda's solution to "retrench the staff" speaks volumes of his/her intelligence and business acumen. Anakmuda likely flies AirAsia, and thinks that because AirAsia is cheap, it is because they do not pay their staff as much. Let us assume that the MAS board reads Anakmuda's comment and in their equal business acumen capacities believe that it is the answer. We can easily predict that a loss in staff will proportionately affect loss in productivity. Less flights can be offered, routes will be removed, remaining flights will likely be at higher prices. I suppose AirAsia will be happy because more people will be forced to choose AirAsia. In a chain affect, eventually people, with the disappearance of routes and flight frequency MAS will disappear from the market and AirAsia becomes the sole service provider. Would that not be dandy for AirAsia and would that not result in their prices becoming much less competitive? Then Anakmuda might realize retrenchment is an ugly word and if he/she does anything to earn his/her own keep, he/she will be more careful in suggesting such an offensive and appalling thing that is tantamount to calling for the livelihood of many people who have spent many years serving the company and their clients.
2b) Firstly, there is no such thing as free flights for staff and families. There are annual privilege travel allocated for staff and their direct dependants, provided they apply within a stipulated period of time. The idea that a handful of free flights are just handed out to staff to do pass around to their relatives is not only absurd in the context of REALITY, but insulting wrong.
Secondly, AirAsia actually does allocate a certain amount of free flights to their staff but you do not see that the company is making losses out of the practice. Other airlines such as Delta Airlines have buddy passes, which means that not only do staff get free yearly flights, but their family and a handful of their friends do too. While at Malaysia Airlines, your parents only count as a dependant if BOTH of them are retired and not working. How likely is that? Not very unless you are already well in your fifties, in which case your parents may not be very likely exercising their annual travel privilege anyway.
Which brings me to my third layer of argument. Many staff actually do not even use their annual privilege travel to travel very far. Because having free flight ticket, while being a big chunk of holiday and travel costs, is not tantamount to a free holiday. If you do not have enough to spend for an overseas holiday, or have no practical reason to travel, you would not likely use the flight to travel overseas. So many staff actually use their annual privilege travel to fly from KL to Kota Bharu, or Sabah Sarawak to go home for the holidays. Now tell me, if you work for an airline, is that not a justifiable ANNUAL privilege? And it would cost the company about rm200-300 operational (tax is paid by the traveling employee). Considering MAS barely gives bonus to their employees (maybe Rm1k a year for during Raya), I believe it is justifiable.
2c) Finally, while traveling under a free or discounted ticket, you can bet that you will be treated like a substandard passenger. Not by the cabin crew, since there is no such identification on board, but certainly when you check in-- which along with airport security and immigration as many may agree with me, is 95% of the travel stress. 5% is that crying baby across the aisle.
In short, as an MAS staff or dependent you get a reasonable allocated privilege, with a bad aftertaste.
Not exactly the type of sentiments you want to breed in employees of a company. But there you have it. That is the reality.
You know what makes me sad about all this? I know that the airline at its inception was destined for great things. It was at the head of its game in the 80's, the service was 5star, the employees had their perks that should come with the job, they were proud to be serving the company and it was reflected in their productivity. In the next few months MAS will be one of the youngest fleets in the world, which is something that they can truly capitalize on to turn things around.
But if people like Fairplay Lee and anakmuda insist on being obtuse, not looking at the bigger scheme of operations, and being blind to that flawed management, which survives because they too find a scapegoat in 'retrenchable' employees despite expensive mistakes they make, then they are only further fueling the demise of a national carrier that many Malaysians could be proud of.
Okay, your turn.
And of course, after the article, comes a barrage of comments about how MAS should cut down on staff wages and the "free" airline ticket that staff and their dependents are allocated annually.
Comments that particularly irked me because of how patently ignorant they were include:
"How can MAS improve its financial standing when the staff have no direction and focus to make a turnaround? Get rid of politics within the airline and crack the whip and make the staff work for their salary."
-someone who calls himself "Fairplay Lee"
"MAS staff are being highly overpaid. come on. just retrench them.
and the free flight tickets to all staff + families. that is a waste too. company can save up to RM100 million if they scrap that thing off."
-someone who calls himself "anakmuda"
Now I begin my rebuttals with fair allowance that I am probably biased. But only a little bit. And only by default because I happen to benefit from annual privilege travel. But the rest of my exposition I hope you agree comes from a sound and objective mind.
1) On "earning wages, and cracking the whip":
1a) Relatively, pilots earn a lot. That is true. But the pay, as commonly scaled, is justified by mainly two things a) occupational hazard, b) the cost of training, and c) demand versus supply.
Anybody who cracks jokes about how pilots just put the flight on auto and read the newspaper for the rest of the flight (mostly the pilots themselves I guess) should remember that when the shit hits the ceiling, you do not want to leave your life in the hands of a computer.
If anything, the autopilot is a necessary flexibility for pilots who have to work at 8-14 hour stretches under constantly threatened and volatile conditions.
If you are anything like me and a nervous flier, any bit of turbulence is sure to make your palms sweaty and make your mouth automatically muttering prayers just in case you beat the statistical odds and end up being in a tragic flight. Imagine if you are the one who actually has DO something about the turbulence. And that is where the demand versus supply comes in. NOT MANY PEOPLE CAN DO THIS JOB, yet almost everybody flies.
Fairplay Lee would also do good to google up the Hudson river plane crash which could have easily have resulted into a fatal accident had the pilots not performed to the max of their capabilities. Of course such flights rarely occur. But the average flight itself is always cruising in a path of torrent and potential catastrophes which, properly managed by skilled pilots, do not manifest into incidents or accidents.
Fairplay Lee says that pilots are sleeping on the job or have no direction. But their roles are literally to fly the plane from point A to point B safely. And I think Malaysia Airline pilots are renowned for their standards of giving a smooth and safe flight. However, what is the standard and what seems easy (because you do not hear about MAS incidents in the news), is not easy.
I worry about my husband's safety with each flight he takes. Especially after I had the opportunity to sit in a cockpit and observe how many ways a flight can go wrong I thank my lucky stars my job is no where near as crucial as his. I would just pee in my pants at the first sight of thunder. And he has flown in between cyclones while passengers are sobbing over the ending of The Notebook.
However, let us look at the job description of people whose salaries amount to rm4 million per annum, or a hefty hundreds of thousands montly.
- A review and adoption of long-term objectives and strategy, capital and funding requirements, operating plans, major investments and disposals, financial statements and dividends.
- Succession planning for senior management.
- Ensuring that the Company has adequate resources to meet its objectives.
- Ensuring that an effective safety and risk management system is maintained.
- Monitoring the Company’s performance and ensuring that it acts ethically and meets its responsibilities to all stakeholders
(from http://weechookeong.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/mas-2011-report-2-exec-directors-salaries-benefits-rm3755000/.)
So let us be reasonable when we make our judgments. If a company does well, you salute management for their foresight and planning and downstream staff for rising to the visions of management. If a company does poorly, you blame management because they do not give a chance for other staff to excel at their work.
1b) On the note of getting paid a lot, pilots are also taxed very heavily as well. At present, a higher earning First Officer gets rm17k, but sees only rm13k of it That is an rm4k monthly tax. Which is equivalent to the starting salary at a high paying private company. And all of which feeds back into the government's piggy bank. But businessmen who earn twice as much, and assuming are clever in how they portray their income, rarely get taxed as much.
1c) Pilots in Malaysia Airlines get paid a lot less than their peers in other airlines. Despite the fact that non-concessional fares for the airline tickets are comparable to some of the most expensive flights in the market. If you have taken a Malaysia Airlines flight recently, you will notice that it is rarely an empty flight, and more often than not it is a good 3/4ths full and a good chance overbooked. So they are doing reasonable amount of business, certainly comparable to many airlines-- yet they are losing billions.
1d) Regardless of the pay, I agree that people should earn their wages. I however firmly believe my husband and his colleagues earn their keep. My husband's roster is nearing 79hours of work this month- including on Hari Raya. Purely on an hours basis (barring technical difficulty of task, like flying in the middle of the night and being rostered to work during buka puasa) if that does not constitute earning deserved wages, I do not what is.
But if you want to make a more informed judgment about whether or not higher ladder staff do, you can read posts from MP Wee Choo Keong's blog and decide for yourself.
2) On "highly overpaid, retrenchment, and scrapping free flights for staff and families":
2a) I think I have written enough about pilot wages. But I think I should reiterate again that Malaysia Airlines staff if anything, are not being paid as well as their peers in other airlines. Be they pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, or administrative staff.
Anakmuda's solution to "retrench the staff" speaks volumes of his/her intelligence and business acumen. Anakmuda likely flies AirAsia, and thinks that because AirAsia is cheap, it is because they do not pay their staff as much. Let us assume that the MAS board reads Anakmuda's comment and in their equal business acumen capacities believe that it is the answer. We can easily predict that a loss in staff will proportionately affect loss in productivity. Less flights can be offered, routes will be removed, remaining flights will likely be at higher prices. I suppose AirAsia will be happy because more people will be forced to choose AirAsia. In a chain affect, eventually people, with the disappearance of routes and flight frequency MAS will disappear from the market and AirAsia becomes the sole service provider. Would that not be dandy for AirAsia and would that not result in their prices becoming much less competitive? Then Anakmuda might realize retrenchment is an ugly word and if he/she does anything to earn his/her own keep, he/she will be more careful in suggesting such an offensive and appalling thing that is tantamount to calling for the livelihood of many people who have spent many years serving the company and their clients.
2b) Firstly, there is no such thing as free flights for staff and families. There are annual privilege travel allocated for staff and their direct dependants, provided they apply within a stipulated period of time. The idea that a handful of free flights are just handed out to staff to do pass around to their relatives is not only absurd in the context of REALITY, but insulting wrong.
Secondly, AirAsia actually does allocate a certain amount of free flights to their staff but you do not see that the company is making losses out of the practice. Other airlines such as Delta Airlines have buddy passes, which means that not only do staff get free yearly flights, but their family and a handful of their friends do too. While at Malaysia Airlines, your parents only count as a dependant if BOTH of them are retired and not working. How likely is that? Not very unless you are already well in your fifties, in which case your parents may not be very likely exercising their annual travel privilege anyway.
Which brings me to my third layer of argument. Many staff actually do not even use their annual privilege travel to travel very far. Because having free flight ticket, while being a big chunk of holiday and travel costs, is not tantamount to a free holiday. If you do not have enough to spend for an overseas holiday, or have no practical reason to travel, you would not likely use the flight to travel overseas. So many staff actually use their annual privilege travel to fly from KL to Kota Bharu, or Sabah Sarawak to go home for the holidays. Now tell me, if you work for an airline, is that not a justifiable ANNUAL privilege? And it would cost the company about rm200-300 operational (tax is paid by the traveling employee). Considering MAS barely gives bonus to their employees (maybe Rm1k a year for during Raya), I believe it is justifiable.
2c) Finally, while traveling under a free or discounted ticket, you can bet that you will be treated like a substandard passenger. Not by the cabin crew, since there is no such identification on board, but certainly when you check in-- which along with airport security and immigration as many may agree with me, is 95% of the travel stress. 5% is that crying baby across the aisle.
In short, as an MAS staff or dependent you get a reasonable allocated privilege, with a bad aftertaste.
Not exactly the type of sentiments you want to breed in employees of a company. But there you have it. That is the reality.
You know what makes me sad about all this? I know that the airline at its inception was destined for great things. It was at the head of its game in the 80's, the service was 5star, the employees had their perks that should come with the job, they were proud to be serving the company and it was reflected in their productivity. In the next few months MAS will be one of the youngest fleets in the world, which is something that they can truly capitalize on to turn things around.
But if people like Fairplay Lee and anakmuda insist on being obtuse, not looking at the bigger scheme of operations, and being blind to that flawed management, which survives because they too find a scapegoat in 'retrenchable' employees despite expensive mistakes they make, then they are only further fueling the demise of a national carrier that many Malaysians could be proud of.
Okay, your turn.
1 comment:
fairplay lee and anakmuda.hope you guys get hit by idiotic lorry drivers who dont care about the law compare to the pilots who work under stress and following all the laws to get passengers safely to their destinations
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