The grant of retirees' travel benefits is conditional

A retired SIA staff and his or her spouse is "entitled" to a free ticket on its network yearly. The free travel is granted on condition that the retired staff does not take up employment with an airline or company that is considered a competitor of SIA.

This restriction was imposed a decade ago after SIA discovered that one of its management staff joined another airline as a top management personnel after his retirement. A few others also engaged themselves in consultancy work with other airlines which were considered as SIA's competitors.

The irony is that most of the airlines that engaged former SIA retirees did not do well. Two of them closed shop and a few are struggling to survive.

My ex-colleagues started a company and trained a few third world country airlines cabin crew on how to give good inflight service to their passengers. Today, the company has folded up incurring huge losses and the airlines cabin crew they trained were out of job. One glaring example was Sahara Air of India.

Not all retired staff are brilliant people. Most are in their 60s.
As for the pilots, they retire on reaching their 62nd birthday and many do not think they should be flying during their retirement. Why?  The answer is a straightforward one, they are too old to handle such a big responsibility....the lives of their passengers!

A friend of mine told me this story:

He witnessed a road accident on the ECP. It involved a taxi and a motor bike. Apparently, the taxi hit the motor bike as it tried to swerve to the right lane. The biker was laying on the road in a semi conscious state. My friend stopped his car and offered help. The taxi driver called for an ambulance. A little later, the ambulance took the injured biker to the hospital. A tow truck arrived and parked itself next to the taxi. Then a minute later, my friend heard a loud bang.  A speeding taxi hit the tow truck from the back. It was followed by another loud bang and this time it was another taxi slamming into the second taxi. All in all, 3 taxis were involved in the accident. Guess what? All the 3 taxi drivers were greyed haired uncles of over 65 in age.

The point I am trying to arrive at is that old people has less concentration power plus their reaction to a situation is much slower than they think. Also, their modus operandi may be outdated. In fact they should be grateful they are still alive and kicking at that age let alone be employed in a high management position to do damage to SIA.

A former brilliant chairman of SIA was asked to help Tiger Airways out of its difficulties a few years ago. He is in his late 70s and was roped into Tiger as its chairman. Still, he couldn't do much and in fact Tiger lost more money than before. I believe he could have done a fantastic job and help Tiger out of its current position if he was a little younger.

Another ex CEO started an airline after his retirement and he recruited a retired SVP as its CEO. It disappeared as soon as it started from the skyline. So what's the big deal about retirees helping SIA's competitors? Perhaps, it may be an advantage to SIA for these retirees be employed by its competitors.

Therefore, I think SIA should not be unduly worried about its retirees imparting their expertise and knowledge to its competitors.