WILLEMSTAD–Due to changing market conditions Curaçao airline InselAir says it’s forced to make some organisational and operational changes to adapt to these new parameters.
These steps are seen as necessary to remain a healthy company and fulfil its “pivotal role as important contributor to the economy of Curaçao in general, bringing hundreds of thousands tourist yearly to the ABC-islands; as provider of hundreds of direct and thousands of indirect jobs and as main carrier between the islands within the Kingdom of the Netherlands,” management stated i_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________n a release.
With the new initiatives “InselAir has faith and confidence in the future of its organisation and its ability to remain one of the largest employers on Curaçao.”
In recent months InselAir has, to a large extent compensated the decrease of the Venezuelan part of its operations (from 35 to 4 per cent) by adding new routes and destinations to its network, such as Port-of-Spain, Barranquilla, Georgetown, Manaus, Havana, San Juan and Quito. In addition, InselAir has increased frequencies to and from Paramaribo, Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo.
“It turns out to be very challenging to compensate this loss completely and we realise that we will need to accept this and restructure our organisation around this ‘new reality,’” said Chief Executive officer (CEO) Albert Kluijver.
“For the part of our operations that we were unable to compensate, we will have to reduce our cost. For that reason we have been carefully looking into all aspects of our business including financial, operational, commercial, general affairs and maintenance to realise the cost reduction required to compensate for particularly that part.
“Another important initiative is to scale down our flight operations based on the new expected traffic from our revised route network,” according to Kluijver.
Reducing the operational activities means that InselAir will also need to reduce its cost and the amount of employees that was needed in the previous operational situation. Essentially, a smaller operation will be managed by a smaller group of employees.
“Therefore, InselAir will be re-organising our workforce by combining positions, eliminating departments and/or re-allocating employees. Employees that are not able to be guaranteed a position within the new company structure will unfortunately be laid-off. This group will be granted full support to find a new position at another organisation,” added the company statement.
“Although very regretfully, the abovementioned steps are critical to ensure InselAir’s position in the Pan-American skies and to create a stable, financially healthy and solid organisation for all its stakeholders, including our dedicated employees that remain at the organisation, which is ready for the future.
“Due to recent implemented actions and measures InselAir is already seeing an improvement of the on-time performance from 60 to 72 per cent and strives to get it back to 85 per cent within the foreseeable future. Regarding the traffic from South-America to the Caribbean, InselAir will remain the third largest carrier in the region, serving 22 destinations and 140 routes with a current fleet of 14 aircraft.
“Also, from 2017 onwards, InselAir will also be renewing its fleet of MD and Fokker type of aircraft,” the release concludes.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/62104-inselair-takes-austerity-steps
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