Originally Posted by
shinytubedreamer
In a normal world this is the case, your idea would 100% be relevant. With most European majors, their junior officers start off with A320s or B737s on their "in house" short haul routes, like BA, LH, KLM, SU, etc all do the same; in LH, it is furthermore possible to transfer between its subsidiaries like GWI or Cityline. In a normal airline, you would have a highly experienced SFO or "Relief Captain" in order to do long haul relief duties. Here, you have Second Officers to do so.
What we are dealing with here is not a normal airline, but one which crunch costs to a bare minimum. You think that they really care about their cadets' flying skills? I don't work in CX but to what I've heard, all they need is someone "Qualified" in order to babysit the flight deck during the long hauls. When I say qualified, I don't mean competent. It is simply the legal meaning of the word, i.e. just for paperwork purposes. As a 2nd officer, they don't need you to fly the plane well. What interests them here is nothing but cost, someone who is able to stay awake for 6+ hours doing nothing, and sitting on low pay. If you fail to upgrade after the 5-7 years as SO, they would fire you in return for a DEFO, who would be lower on the seniority list in comparison to an upgraded SO, which in return, would be cheaper.
Then again they are not afraid of losing SO's, since there are thousands of starry eyed locals wishing to do that, for the perks of saying "I'm a pilot". Having been to selection events, I have had cadet candidates who possessed NO interest for aviation whatsoever. I remembered someone who couldn't distinguish A330s and B777s, someone who said that it was just cool to be a pilot, and another who simply needed a grad job, as well as one who spoke barely any English (How did he even pull that one off on the application forms?). Sure, I don't know what became of these people at the end but if this is the sort of people they are even considering hiring, then what can you expect.
Back to your topic, in short, don't expect to see any combination of training or any sort of way to allow 2nd officers to gain flying experience between airlines happening for the moment. They don't want that, and they don't need that. If that was the aim in the first place, then CX would have done it on their own fleet earlier already.
That's what my research, experience, and conversations have told me. Feel free to correct me with some "insider info" should I be mistaken on certain facts.