ia1166 mate, with the greatest of respect, you weren't part of the A330 debacle, and I feel like you're trying to defend the indefensible a little bit here
Some of us were senior FOs on A330 for close to a decade, while guys on A321 were typically going right to left within 3 or 4 years.
Most of us turned down job offers at other companies over the years, because we were consistently given the message by management pilots that we would be up for command soon, just wait a little bit more, etc etc. Naive or not, some of us made career decisions on the basis of that.
So when the A350 came, that rug was pulled from under us overnight, and we now got told no commands were available, and we had the choice of being terminated, or paying huge sums of money to keep our job on something that should be a common type rating with A330 anyway. AND we had to commit to another 5 years minimum in the right seat, and get kicked to the back of the command queue
And they gave us the phone call on christmas eve, I know it's a small thing and shouldn't matter but that really p!ssed me off, my wife was in tears all christmas day
They actually seemed to be very surprised when most of us chose resignation. Wizzair came to town and was doing walk in interviews in HCM and Hanoi with the offer of instant commands, QR also did a road show, JPA offered us all interviews etc. By the time they realized their bluff had backfired and they gave command courses to the last 2 guys, everyone else had walked out the door. Everyone knew they needed 321 skips, it was a ridiculous situation.
Yes I know it's the contract world, and it's dog eat dog, and harden up, and expect nothing other than what's written in my contract etc etc. It's easy to say when you're already a very senior captain and you're in a secure position, and you don't have young kids and a family to feed, and you don't have to choose between getting financially wiped out through unemployment, or getting financially wiped out by accepting such a bad deal. I don't blame Balboa or anyone else for feeling angry about that situation. It certainly wasn't sold to us like that by the agencies when we joined.
Having said all that, it's totally racist and unacceptable to say things against "all Viets". The whole thing was essentially the scheme of one guy, and I am very grateful to the local management pilots who reportedly stood up for us in the board meeting and saved some of our jobs in the end.
I like living in VN, I like the people, I like a lot of things about the airline and the operation, I want to finish my career here. All I wanted at that time was what everyone on other fleets was getting, reasonable time to command and no constantly moving goalposts