Alaska Airlines has jumped on the bandwagon of airlines like American Airlines and Southwest, as well as other large American corporations to offer its staff a $1,000 one-time bonus to mark tax reforms introduced by the Trump Administration. The airline announced the payout as it also confirmed details of a group-wide annual bonus scheme.
Alaska will be paying all of its staff, including at Virgin America and Horizon Air a bonus which amounts to about 7% of their annual salary – working out to around a month worth of salary on average.
The generous bonus is based on performance related achievements across a range of areas including safety, customer satisfaction, cost control, customer loyalty and profit. The additional one-time $1,000 bonus comes off the back of projected savings Alaska hopes to make from Trump’s controversial tax reforms.
“In light of so many important achievements in the last year, including meeting several integration milestones, I’d like to thank all 23,000 employees at Alaska, Virgin America, Horizon and McGee Air Services for their hard work and laser-like focus on safety,” explained Ben Minicucci, Alaska Airlines’ president and COO.
“it’s an honour to work alongside such dedicated, committed employees who deliver outstanding service to our guests every day.”
Alaska says its paid out around $148 million in bonuses to its staff in the last year. That figure includes the annual bonus and around $7 million in monthly operational bonuses that staff have already seen in their paychecks.
Commenting on Alaska’s takeover of Virgin America, Minicucci said he hoped work to integrate the two carriers into one under the Alaska brand would be 75% complete by April. Recently Virgin America officially ceased to exist when the FAA issued a single operating licence for the expanded Alaska.
The airline has already co-located operations in 22 out of 31 airports the two airlines fly from and they now share the same frequent flyer programme. Still to come is a big switch to an integrated reservations system and website, as well as bringing airport technology like check-in kiosks under one brand.
