Originally Posted by
Telfer86
Thanks for the info , sure if people wish to say " For me living in HK and getting $200K (AUD) after tax to fly a WB around the world is not good enough , I shall leave and go to Kiwi Land to fly a TP for $40K" , well that is there right as free man . I just don't think there will be so many following them
Obviously you could model this mathematically , just a fairly complex calculation
I think the guesstimate that JFO time will go to 5 , just doesn't pass the smell test. An increase of 67% just because one more SO (& one less FO) is required on some ULR flights
Actually Telfer your posts don't pass the smell test.
From HoT in his letter to SOs 13 April 2018, upgrade times for those who joined 2H2015 are now 4.8 years and if you read the fine print under that, that's IF the training ban is mitigated. He refuses to estimate upgrade times for those who joined 2016 and beyond as they don't plan more than 3 years ahead. The letter also acknowledges the TB, DEFOs and 2SO long-haul will negatively affect upgrade times.
Practically speaking I'm sure anyone in Cathay will tell you their training plans are also notoriously optimistic and a work of fiction as soon as they're published hence they normally average more than 12 training plans over a year.
Kranz,
From an ex-SO who has moved on (despite the fact I apparently earnt $200k (guffaw guffaw)) it's not worth it. To answer your questions:
Company culture, excluding the crews, is toxic.
Crews are fantastic to work with and you'll make great, life long friends.
Rates of pay are decent but decreasing (partial 13th month 2017, no inflationary adjustment for a while) and you're not going to get a lot of bang for you buck in HK (so much so it led me down the commuting road).
Rosters for SOs are fairly stable especially after your first year. After upgrade it depends on your fleet. 777 OK, Airbus rotten and Jumbo God help you.
Est time to FO. See above. The company has made a deliberate decision to stop upgrading its junior officers. Less than 2% of SOs for 2018 and direct from the DFO's mouth the majority of FO requirements for 2019/20 will be filled by DEFOs. Company's actions are possibly an attempt to apply industrial pressure to the junior pilots but who knows. Upgrade times to Captain can also be reasonably expected to substantially increase.
Absolutely not. I would be in a better position today - professionally, personally, financially - if I had chosen the other path on offer at the time. I made the mistake of believing Cathay was still a career airline. That's Cathay management trading on its old reputation.
Having just been down the recruitment/interview/sim road fairly recently (and excluding QF applications) you need PIC time (and preferably all the other pre-requisites for an ATPL). If you've got that then your P2X may be of
some use if you need to tick a 'FMC/Glass cockpit' box or a 'jet' box but nobody out there is going to have any real interest in your HKCAD logbook. Not sure what's happening with QF but rumour has it a very large number of Cathay's Aussie SOs are currently on the hold file waiting start dates.
Having also taken one of the jobs mentioned by Telfer I can assure you my disposable after tax income is much higher than it was at Cathay, my living standard is higher (by orders of magnitude), my professional satisfaction is higher, my lifestyle is better and I will achieve command years before I would have even gotten to command assessment at Cathay. As an added bonus earning money now as an FO and with a much shorter upgrade time to Captain I can expect my career earning to also be higher. As an added added bonus I no longer have to put up with the Cathay training system.
Not saying Telfer is not flight crew at Cathay but in my time there I never met a crew member with that attitude about the job vs other jobs or who quoted those sort of figures/statistics to justify the job so let's just get the Fragrant Harbour version of Godwin's law out of the way and call Telfer suspiciously management like.
So in summary I would say stick in there. The industry is really moving at the moment. Build your hours. Keep throwing applications in and before you know it you'll have much better offers than Cathay.