Originally Posted by
Jetstream alpha
As a cadet, with I'm assuming little to no flying hours CX is one of the very few airlines that will fund your training, which is quite a major pro. Think only Lufthansa, Air France, Emirates, Aer Lingus and CX offer ab-initio training that you don't have to pay up-front, even BA have recently gone down the road of requiring a contribution of £100,000+ from their cadets.
For someone wanting to pursue flying with low hours the CX cadet program remains one of the best opportunities out there. If your alternative is to fly in Europe then your options are very limited:
option 1: try out for one of the self funded cadet programs (easyJet, Vueling, Flybe, BA) either work for 10+ years saving as much as you can, take out a massive loan or have a rich family to afford the £100,000+ course fees.
option 2: again spend £100,000+ on an integrated course with a flying school with airline links on the hope that you might be able to land a jet job straight out of school.
option 3: go modular and still spend around £50,000-70,000 on your training, if you're very lucky then drop another £5000 on a type rating with a 3 year bond attached to fly for Ryanair and if you're not lucky then end up with f*ck all just again a lot of debt or wasted money.
CX may not be perfect, but there really is no better opportunity out there for someone who would be in the position of applying for the cadet program
Sorry JA but that's factually incorrect. CX now make you pay upfront 50% and I believe that number is $700kHKD (happy to be corrected). This is repaid over 3 years, so $20kpm. deduct that from your Yr1,2,3 SO salary, tax rent, living costs and you are left with around $5000-$8000pm....assuming you has a wad of cash to start with to help with the setup costs!
Of course, we all started somewhere and in debt so this is no different, whoever is looking needs to take all those factors into consideration rather than looking for confirmation bias which seems to be the case most of the time.