Singapore Air Cargo pilots offered unpaid leave on demand slump

Singapore Airlines Ltd., the world’s biggest airline by market value, said its cargo unit is offering pilots as much as 30 months’ unpaid leave because of slumping air-freight demand.

The cargo unit is also planning to park some aircraft over the next few months, airline spokesman Stephen Forshaw said in an e-mail today. The airline’s passenger unit isn’t planning any similar steps at present, he added.

Singapore Airlines joins Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. in offering employees unpaid leave, as airlines battle to cut costs amid slowing demand. Global freight traffic fell 13.5 percent last month from a year earlier, the sixth straight decline, while passenger traffic dropped for the third month in a row, the International Air Transport Association said yesterday.

“SIA Cargo needs to do all it can to contain costs,” Forshaw said. The freight unit has about 300 pilots, while Singapore Airlines employs about 2,000 pilots, the Business Times said today, when reporting the plans.

The cargo unit posted an operating loss of S$76 million ($53 million) in the six months ended September, compared with a S$19 million profit a year earlier, the airline said in November.

Singapore Airlines started the cargo division in 1992. The unit operates 14 Boeing Co. 747-400F freighters as well as using capacity on Singapore Airlines’ passenger aircraft, according to the company’s Web Site.


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U.S. Teens Share Education With Kids in Cambodia

U.S. Teens Share Education With Kids in Cambodia

Cambodian kids, football team

Cambodia's Overlake School is named after a school bearing that same name in Washington state, where students worked to fund their counterpart in Cambodia.

When the American students learned schools were badly needed in the Cambodian countryside, they began to work with the group American Assistance for Cambodia to build a school.

"Words can't express how proud I am of what we've accomplished," said 12th grader Kelsey Schmidt.

The students raised $15,000 through bake sales, talent shows and raffles to build the Cambodian school. Once the school was built, they kept raising funds for teachers, books and the computers.

New E-Mail Buddies

Some of the students had the opportunity to travel to Cambodia to receive a hero's welcome from hundreds of children at the school.

Kun Sokkea, 13, said she's in school for the first time and can finally dream of a better future.

She lives in a one-room shack and her mother is dying of AIDS, but she is now e-mailing her American friends to update them on her studies and progress as she learns English.

"What I want to take away is the knowledge that one person, a high school student, can make this huge difference in someone's life," said 11th grader Nathan Cocanour.

And in a remote corner of Cambodia, the students of the Overlake School have certainly done just that.

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