If CX starts busting contracts, legal or illegal, enforceable or not, the moral at CX will sink to depths previously unknown. The disdain between pilots and management will be so toxic that the airline may never recover.
Through pure misfortune, CX is enjoying most pilots being onside at the moment as we all seek to survive this virus. It’s one thing to ask for SLS and get union approved pay concessions for idled, based pax pilots. It is something very different to furlough out of seniority against every contract in CX/KA, except the “amendable” POS18.
This airline will quite literally crash and burn if it tries to fly the operation solely with pilots on local contracts. They aren’t there YET, and they know it. Letting go of guys at 55 on CoS99 is fair enough, but out of seniority redundancies are a radical path that not even CX is brave enough to try on.
CX has an opportunity. They are at a fork in the road and can go several different directions. At the moment, it appears there is no leadership making any decisions. Perhaps that is wrong, and they just haven’t moved yet. I would like to think that the plan for expensive expats is to move them onto bases and keep mostly local contracts in Hong Kong, but since when has CX ever done anything that actually makes sense?