320 Cabin Attendants apply for JAL's Early Retirement Plan

JAL International has received applications for a special early retirement plan from a total of 320 cabin attendants in Japan. The deadline for applications was December 21, 2007.

The voluntary plan was offered to cabin attendants who at the time of March 31, 2008 will have completed at least 15 years service and will be 54 years or older if they hold managerial positions, or will be 50 years old or older if they hold non-managerial positions. 900 staff were eligible for the early retirement plan.

The retirement date for the successful applicants will be at either the end of March, or September, 2008.

This brings to 1,200 the total number of applicants for early retirement plans offered by JAL in FY2007, the year ending March 31, 2008.

On August 24 2007, JAL announced that it had decided to ask ground staff in Japan in middle management positions ('jicho' & 'kacho' class in Japanese) who were 49 or above as of March 31, 2007 and had been employed for at least 15 years to apply for a special early retirement plan. The company received 630 applications for this scheme. The retirement date for these staff was November 30, 2007.

JAL also offered an early retirement program to senior management staff in Japan who were 54 years and over on March 22, 2007. Applicable staff for the new program were vice president level department heads ('bucho' class in Japanese) in JAL's ground-based staff, cabin attendant and flight operations departments. A total of 250 applied and retired June 30, 2007.

To help secure smooth business operations and pass on skills and techniques, maintenance engineering staff and flight operations control staff have been excluded from the early retirement schemes.

The company announced in the FY2007-2010 Medium-term Corporate Plan (released on Feb 6, 2007) measures to trim personnel costs including the implementation of early retirement measures to build a more dynamic, and streamlined organization. The company plans to reduce personnel costs by 50 billion yen each fiscal year when compared to FY2006 through a combination of the following measures: increasing human productivity by 10% through a review of work content and work process, work form, manpower allocation and restructuring of affiliated businesses; suspending new hiring; not replacing retiring staff; natural reduction in  addition to the implementation of special early retirement programs.

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