JAL offers unpaid leave
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Following the reduction in capacity in the wake of the recent disasters in Japan, the country’s national carrier, Japan Airlines (JAL) has announced that it will offer unpaid leave to employees. Maintenance staff, cabin attendants and flight crew will be offered the unpaid leave for a maximum of two calendar months over May and June. JAL said the measure was necessary to “support recovery works and to maintain a sound business operation”.
The JAL Group recently announced that it will slash its international capacity in April by cutting flight frequencies and switching to smaller aircraft. The airline will cut a total of 74 weekly flights on 11 international routes this month, including services connecting Tokyo Narita with Honolulu, Shanghai, Kaohsiung, Beijing, Seoul, Busan and Taipei, as well as those between Osaka and Taipei and Seoul, and Haneda-Seoul. The airline’s daily Narita-Hong Kong flights have been cancelled entirely during April.
JAL stressed that the cuts were temporary, and are intended to “secure profitability as travel demand decreases following the Tohoku Pacific earthquake”. The President of JAL said recently that international traffic had declined 25% since the 11 March earthquake and tsunami, and that domestic traffic is down 28%. Authorities at Narita airport said that arrivals had declined 60% in the aftermath of the disasters.
The airline recently emerged from its state-run restructuring programme, initiated following its January 2010 bankruptcy filing. The restructuring required the airline to lay off 16,000 employees, or approximately one third of its workforce. The airline did not detail how many employees it wants or expects to take unpaid leave over the next two months.
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