Airline promises that proposed Mango pilot strike won’t affect flights – so what’s the point?

A strike is meant to be the final attempt by labour to force employers to agree to its demands. So what happens when your strike is not going to have any impact on the operations of the business? Why bother? Those are the questions pilots at SAA’s low cost Mango Airline need to be asking themselves and their trade union officials. Judging by the response from Mango’s management, it is ready to draft in other pilots to fill the seats that the 100 or so potential strikers will vacate. Drafted in, presumably, from stablemate SAA. – AH      

GUGULETHU MFUPHI: Mango pilots could be going on strike after Solidarity, the union that represents 90 of the airline’s 101 pilots received a certificate of non-resolution by the CCMA.  Hein Keiser Communications Manager at the airline joins us now for more.  Hein, if you can, perhaps just tell us what is the current situation?

HEIN KEISER:  Good afternoon, at the moment the situation is no strike at this time.  There is a strike action that was issued, but talks are continuing between the union and us.

GUGULETHU MFUPHI: What is the complaint at hand here?  Is this perhaps related to a salary increase?

HEIN KEISER:  What it is, is salary parity between what we pay and what other low-cost airlines in the industry pay.  Three years ago, there was a deal structured, which we have stuck to, to provide exactly that.  We’ve stuck to our side of the agreement, and that is where we are at this time.

ALEC HOGG:   Hein, I guess most people who fly nowadays, do it because they get the best price, or some, certainly for the best service.  I need to get to Cape Town on Thursday, from Durban.  Can you guarantee that my Mango flight is not going to be stuck on the tarmac?

HEIN KEISER:  Absolutely.  We do have contingency plans in place should industrial action indeed occur.  We do have contingency plans, but at this time, the status quo remains and all our flights are in the air.

ALEC HOGG:   When are we likely to hear whether the strike will go ahead?

HEIN KEISER:  We are expecting word from the pilots’ union probably later on this week.

ALEC HOGG:   How much of a difference is there?

HEIN KEISER:  Vis-à-vis?

ALEC HOGG:   Between the salaries, that’s what we’re talking about…

HEIN KEISER:  Oh, the salary: based on the agreement that we reached with the pilots’ body a couple of years ago, there will be salary parity probably by the end of this year.  It was a three-year agreement.

ALEC HOGG:   How much difference…what is the difference that we’re talking about…how many percentage points improvement will you have to add on between now and the end of the year, to make them happy?

HEIN KEISER:  Well, over the three years parity would have been reached between an aggregate…between what Comair and One Time would have been paying – the now-defunct One Time.  It would be a little bit amiss to compare a true low-cost airline with a hybrid model where there’s a full service and a low cost brand in one stable, as with Comair.  Certainly, from a salary perspective, we will be on a very close par with what the rest of the industry is paying.

ALEC HOGG:   So if I understand you correctly, at Comair the guys who are on Kulula can actually hope over to British Airways maybe, and earn a little bit of extra money, but on your side your pilots on Mango stick with Mango.  They don’t go to SAA.

HEIN KEISER:  Yes, we do have our own pilot body, as does SAA, so we don’t actually share a pool of pilots, as it would be at a company that runs a low cost and a full service brand.

ALEC HOGG:   But if your pilots go on strike, are you going to pull in SAA pilots?

HEIN KEISER:  We do have contingency plans where we can draw on resources from across various role players.

GUGULETHU MFUPHI: Hein, we know that low cost airlines are on tight margins.  The increase in salaries: could that translate into increased ticket costs?

HEIN KEISER:  There are many factors that actually impact ticket costs at this point in time.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed.  The exchange rate is not exactly in our favour, and the majority of any airline’s input costs are dollar based whether it’s maintenance or fuel, and of course, the fuel price has remained high.  So yes, certainly any additional overhead expense will ultimately impact the cost of the fare.