碩研工管一甲M99U0208

張濬騰

Sequoia Airlines

Sequoia Airlines is a well-established regional airline serving California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

Sequoia competes against much larger carriers in this regional market, and its management feels that the price, frequency of flight service, ability to meet schedules, baggage handling, and image projected by its flight attendants are the most important marketing factors that airline passengers consider when deciding to use a particular carrier.

Sequoia has discovered that competing regional carriers (whose training programs are not as highly developed) have been hiring away from Sequoia a significant proportion of its staff by offering slightly higher direct salaries, attractive indirect benefit packages, and guarantees of a minimum number of flying hours in off-peak demand periods.

As a beginning, Sequoia's management has asked for a 6-month hiring and training analysis of the flight-attendant staff requirements beginning next month (July). An investigation of the operations schedule indicates that 14,000 attendant-hours are needed in July, 16,000 in August, 13,000 in September, 12,000 in October, 18,000 in November, and 20,000 in December.

Sequoia's training program for new personnel requires an entire month of classroom preparation before they are assigned to regular flight service.

As junior flight attendants, they remain on probationary status for 1 additional month. Periodically, there is some personnel movement from the working flight attendant staff to the staff that supervises the training of new employees. Figure 11.15 shows the relationships and percentages of interstaff movements.

FIGURE 11.15

The poorly kept secret of Sequoia's personalized training program is that the number of trainees is limited to no more than five per instructor. Instructors not needed in a particular month (i.e., surplus) may be used as flight attendants. To ensure a high level of quality in flight service, Sequoia requires that the proportion of junior flight attendant hours not exceed 25 percent of any month's total (i.e., junior plus experi enced) attendant-hours.

In May, Sequoia hired 10 new employees to enter the training program, and this month, it hired 10 more. At the beginning of June, there were 120 experienced flight attendants and six instructors on Sequoia's staff.

Thanks for your listening.