Word: southwester
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...members of the Singapore Jemaah Islamiah cell who escaped arrest and fled the country, had been planning an attempt to crash a plane into Singapore's Changi Airport. The airport is now reportedly protected by anti-aircraft missiles, as are the huge refinery facilities on the island's southwest section of Jurong, where multinationals such as Shell and Exxon Mobil maintain large facilities. In mid-October Singapore deployed units of its armored division around the area as further safeguards. By Simon Elegant/Kuala Lumpur...
...high morale and good customer service, in large part through careful recruitment and training. The airline received 200,000 resumes last year but hired only 6,000 workers--making it more selective than Harvard. "Attitude is critical; skills are not," says Lorraine Grubbs-West, director at the People Department. (Southwest doesn't use the word employee.) Byron Woods, 22, a customer-service-agent trainee at Southwest, isn't much bothered that he is getting only half the $18 an hour he once made at United. That airline, he says, "trained me for eight hours on how to use the computer...
...airline has enjoyed big savings by never having the type of defined-benefit pension plan that is proving so troublesome for other carriers. Pension plans at eight major airlines are underfunded to the tune of $12 billion. Southwest was, however, the first major airline to establish an employee stock-ownership plan without asking for wage concessions...
Still, some workers at Southwest are demanding a raise. The flight attendants' base pay of $23 an hour for a six-year veteran trails the pay at other carriers by as much as $15. They have just started negotiations on a new contract, which union president McDaniel vows will include "industry leading" wages. Entry-level mechanics at Southwest had long been paid slightly less than the industry average--a factor that moved the mechanics union to force the company before a federal mediator. On Oct. 11, the mechanics accepted the company's second contract offer. But one mechanic warned...
...Southwest has other advantages beyond its work force. It flies point-to-point domestic routes, as opposed to the complex and expensive hub-and-spoke international networks operated by other major airlines. There are no meals served onboard, no bulky drinks carts and no entertainment. Where it makes sense, as at Oakland International Airport in California and Midway Airport in Chicago, Southwest uses less expensive, less crowded secondary airports. It flies only one type of aircraft--the Boeing 737--to reduce maintenance costs and turnaround time, and it contracts out its most intensive maintenance work. That allows the airline...