A SINGAPORE Airlines Boeing 777 captain at the mid-point of his salary bracket makes more than $270,000 a year. This makes him a bigger earner than a vice-president of the company, who makes $233,270.
SIA has 935 B777 captains and just 36 vice-presidents.
Details of the airline's pay structure for pilots and other staff came to light yesterday, Day 1 of the Industrial Arbitration Court (IAC) hearing to settle a dispute with its pilots' union over salary and benefits.
The pilots have been pushing for higher wages to be paid to those who will be in the cockpit of the Airbus 380 superjumbo, which enters into service later this year.
The High Court hearing follows more than a year of wrangling, during which the two sides met 16 times.
For over two hours yesterday, SIA divisional vice-president for industrial relations Loh Oun Hean, and Captain Robert Ting, vice-president of the Flight Operations Division and chief pilot for the A380, told the court why pilots should not be paid more to fly the A380.
The airline is proposing that A380 and B777 pilots get the same pay; it intends eventually to pay all pilots a common basic salary, regardless of the aircraft type they fly.
The Air Line Pilots Association-Singapore (Alpa-S) argues that A380 pilots should be paid more than those who fly the Boeing 747 jumbo because the new plane is bigger.
Each of SIA's A380s will seat around 480 passengers, about 100 more than the Boeing 747 jumbo now in service.
The airline, in presenting its case to the three-member IAC panel led by IAC president, Justice Tan Lee Meng, said that between 55 and 60 per cent of a pilot's basic pay now depends on the type of aircraft he handles.
For all other payments, including bonuses and productivity allowances, the distinction is between captains and first officers - not type of plane flown.
For instance, a captain makes $55 an hour for the first 70 hours, and a first officer, $36.
Turning to the technical specifications of the A380 and comparing it with other planes in SIA's present and future fleet, Capt Ting told the courtroom packed with more than 60 staff and union members that the truth was that the A380 was really not that difficult to fly.
A pilot for 36 years who test-flew the A380 when it visited Singapore last year, he said the side stick controllers were light and easy to operate.
'I just flew it with my finger tips,' he said.
Although the A380 is heavier, has a taller tail and longer wingspan compared to other jets, technology and automation erased the impact of this added bulk on piloting.
Capt Ting said the plane's operational scope was 'no more complex than the current and future fleets of SIA'.
Because modern aircraft have similar instrument layouts - especially those built by the same manufacturer - an Airbus 345 pilot, for example, would feel 'instantly at home' in an A380 cockpit.
Capt Ting declared that, with the exception of the B747 jet designed more than 30 years ago, there was really no big difference between flying the A380 and any other modern jet.
He noted that the A380, with its four engines, should also be less stressful to fly than, say, a twin-engined B777, which would lose up to half its thrust during take-off if one engine failed.
He also stressed that a pilot's responsibility did not change with the aircraft type he flew: A captain flying a small single-aisle plane still had to go through the same pre-flight and systems checks.
The hearing continues with Alpa-S presenting its case today.
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