Kenya Airways Strike:Airline goes on Crew Poaching

Middle Eastern pilots have always been accused of pilot poaching,enticing pilots with loads of money and tax free lifestyles.With the pending strike,Kenya Airways has taken cue from its Middle Eastern rivals and is busy poaching cabin crew from other East African carriers.

Reads an ad in a local daily:

Kenya Airways is looking for warm,friendly,multilingual cabin crew from across East Africa-Kenya,Tanzania,Uganda,Burundi,Rwanda.If you have experience as cabin crew on any East African Airline,just get in touch with us now and see your career take off with Africa's premier international airline....Come on,all you have to say is Yes!Oui!Ndio!

Kenya Airways Cabin Crew Recruitment ad(courtesy The Daily Nation)

The management of carriers like Jetlink,Air Uganda,Fly540,Rwandair should be facing a cabin crew hemorrhage in the next one month.Every cabin crew in East Africa dreams of working for Kenya Airways and the pending strike has offered them a golden opportunity to work for the Pride of Africa.

This is a sure sign that the management of KQ is planning to get tough with the Kenya AAWU union this time round;last August,the airline lost Ksh600million($8m) in just two days of a strike that left thousands of passengers stranded and momentarily paralysed the Kenyan horticulture industry that desperately depends on air transport to access markets in Amsterdam,Paris and London.The airline is busy recruiting while at the same time leaving avenues for negotiations with a union that has been described as full of "economically inept but politically well trained agitators".

The recruitment exercise is being channeled via a Flamingo Air email domain.For those with a bad memory,Flamingo Airlines was the Kenya Airways budget subsidiary from 2000-2003 which was eventually reabsorbed into KQ family in 2004.It seems the domain was been revived just in time to handle recruitment during this time of crisis.

Kenya Airways usually handles recruitment directly via its Career Site on its website.So why has KQ suddenly revived the www.flamingo-air.com domain and passed it off as a "Recruitment Company for Kenya Airways" just a few days ago?That is food for thought for the applicants.

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