A lot of JAL staff chose to retire early

Back in early March, Japan Airlines (JAL) announced the early retirement program and aimed to recruit 2,700 employees to join the program. The application deadline was April 16 and JAL has successfully reached its goal, in fact it has far exceeded the 2,700 target!

According to Nikkei, 4,000 employees applied, that's 1,300 or 48% more than the original target! If approved, they will be getting 6 month of severance salaries and got to keep some of their employee benefits for a while. They will retire in late May.

However, JAL probably won't approve all 4,000 applicants at once. The summer travel period is coming and if JAL let all 4,000 staff go at once, it might cause interfere to its normal operation. What's unclear is the distributions of these applicants. For example, ASSUMING half of them are cabin attendants, JAL probably won't be able to approve all 2,000 cabin attendants' applications. There are only 9,440 cabin attendants, losing 2,000 of them means roughly 20% reduction! That's why JAL still have to study all applicants and determine the final number. The final decision is expected to come after end of April.

My guess is if you are a Tokyo based cabin attendant, you probably has a lower chance than the Osaka and Fukuoka based ones. As you might have heard, JAL is planning to shut down those two cabin attendant bases by end of June. It's probably a good reason for those who can't move to Tokyo and qualified for early retirement to apply this time.

For those who didn't get approved, they still have two chances. JAL intends to have two more rounds of early retirement programs in June and September. Since JAL is planning for massive capacity cut in October, it probably will be easier to get your application approved in September :P

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