Originally Posted by
Dilbert68
Under current policy, CX will hire anybody to sit in the cockpit. Let that sink in for a moment.
How many of you have extremely successful friends from all walks of life that will confess to you that they always dreamed of being a pilot? They never pursued it because they weren't passionate about aviation to put up with the years of low paying jobs, living in the middle of nowhere, etc. Most of us put our lives on hold just to fly, it was our sole focus and eventually we landed an airline job after much hard work and many life lessons.
That very same job is now being offered to people that are no more qualified than the guy selling me a phone in Mong Kok. They get to bypass all that hard work and end up in the same place as you are. The result is a group of "pilots" that have no knowledge of aviation whatsoever and furthermore, don't care. They are not earger to sponge up information from the senior crew they fly with, they would rather just collect the pay cheque and go home. No wiser after the flight than they were before it.
And you all wonder why the standards are dropping?
As long as the Trainers in this airline keep letting standards drop then they will. I have flown with far too many line pilots who have no right to be there, the writing is on the wall.
You really think this new crop of recruits is going to balk at COS 18? They would come for half.
Ya....that's a very good point and the reason that if it were to remain relevant, HKAOA would HAVE to strike over the introduction of POS18 (which many, myself included, have said). POS 18 effectively sidesteps the union through the introduction of individual contracts. On whatever conditions downline.
Whether it has the wherewithal to shut the place down I have no idea (but have my doubts).
No matter what, this is a very certification intensive industry. While you might be able to hire any button pusher you want off the street, it takes TIME and money to obtain the ratings (and HKG is more onerous than many) in order to occupy certain seats and perform certain functions. The new hires can get this on a type of apprenticeship, but it will take significant time to spin them up. In other words, if you DON'T want this to happen, you'll have to act to make it not happen.
And by the time they're spun up, it'll all be over (assuming the company is smart enough to hike their conditions just enough to make them stay, but not enough to sustain a life they're chasing--which they historically have been and probably are--and that the new hires are too dumb to figure out this is what's happening--essentially spending their career chasing a fleeting carrot).
The ONE card the union has is that the company can't (at present) man the airline with the z-gen button pushers. This will change over the next few years. So they have the TIME it takes to spin up these people up to act.