SIA freezes hiring of cadet pilots amid business slowdown

SINGAPORE: Singapore Airlines (SIA) said it will freeze the hiring of cadet pilots due to a temporary surplus of First Officers.

In a statement to Channel News Asia, SIA said the company recruits cadets on a three-year lead time basis, and it adjusts cadet recruitment requirements based on its operational environment and other factors such as future aircraft deliveries.

It takes about three years from the time SIA recruits the cadets to the time they become First Officers. The last batch of cadets was recruited early this year.

Analysts Channel NewsAsia spoke to said this was a prudent move by SIA given the current economic uncertainty.

"There have been downturns in the past where SQ has found that it has too many cadet pilots and as a consequence, it has had to retrench cadet pilots or have them go on no-pay leave for lengthy periods of time." said Leithen Francis, an editor at Aviation Week.

"So to avoid a repeat of that situation, I think its prudent that SIA is acting sooner rather than later, by temporarily halting recruitment of cadet pilots. After all, the global economic situation still remains unclear," he added.

SIA denied that the move was linked to a decline in the demand for travel, as reported in The Straits Times newspaper on Monday. SIA also said it has no plans to move its pilots to its regional arm, SilkAir or budget offshoot, Scoot.

News of the hiring freeze comes a week before Singapore's national carrier announces its earnings results for Q3 2012 next Friday.

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In actual fact, the cadet pilot job ad has been taken down since November 2011. I applied for the cadetship in August 2011 for the second time after my first round failure in July 2010, but was never called. Now it seems that SIA cadets and junior pilots are going to have a rough time.

It was only earlier this year that SIA came up with the voluntary no-pay leave for up to two years. The earlier Europe and USA recover from the economic slowdown, the better it is for aviation as a whole. As for SIA, times have changed and perhaps some rethinking needs to be done now that other major airlines like Emirates and Qatar Airways are picking up real fast. Something is going amiss when SIA stops ordering for planes yet Emirates is pushing for massive A380 orders.