| Mexican aviation unions bargain with investors for airline\'s survival |
| Date: 2010/8/23 Click: 1959 |
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Union leaders are spearheading efforts to keep Mexico's largest airline, the troubled Compania Mexicana de Aviacion (CMA), in the air, seeking investors and volunteering for a pay cut.
Two weeks after a court issued a bankruptcy protection order from its debtors, CMA, which has to restructure or close within a year, has already cut its international flights and stopped selling tickets in order to reduce its liabilities.
Lizette Clavel Sanchez, head of the Mexican Aviation Stewards Union Association (ASSA), said Wednesday at least six investor groups had expressed interest in buying the airline, which has a debt of 1.6 billion pesos (about 133.33 million U.S. dollars).
However, she also told a press conference the CMA had scared some investors away by producing unreliable information, saying the company has accumulated a debt of 5.5 billion dollars in the first quarter of this year, not its published figure of 1.25 million dollars.
"It is not that they are not reporting information, but they are not giving information with the speed and transparency needed," she said.
Clavel's statements came one day after the Mexican Airline Pilots Association (ASPA) said it received a concrete offer from venture capital firm Advent International for 49 million dollars.
ASPA spokesman Antonio Vargas Echegoyen told a press conference that Advent only wants to fly 30 airliners, 39 planes less than those at present.
Clavel said Wednesday in a separate radio interview the offer would be helpful, yet 100 million dollars are needed for the CMA to survive in the long term.
Starting this month, both the ASPA and ASSA have become CMA's shareholders. They also temporarily agreed that airline staff could resume work at a flat rate of of 10,000 pesos (some 833.33 dollars) every two weeks, regardless of their responsibilities in the firm.
Local media reported Wednesday the CMA agreed to put 27 Airbus airliners on lease and lower the fleet size to 42.
The CMA, founded in 1921 and one of the world's oldest airlines, indefinitely suspended ticket sales on Aug. 4 but said it would continue operating flights for travelers who already bought them.
If the CMA would have to close, its subsidiary low-cost airlines Click and Link have to face the same fate, even though they are financially stable. The three airlines represent 8,000 jobs nationwide.
Over 500 of the airline's pilots and flight attendants demonstrated inside Mexico City's airport on Aug.1 to protest possible layoffs or pay cuts.
High labor costs are believed to be the reason that drove the company to the brink of the abyss, and the company is trying to persuade unions to accept 41-percent pay cuts and the axing of 700 jobs in order to survive. |
