"Those guys" didn't choose to be part of Cathay either.
Yet KA pilots have been told the last 10 years "we", "us" with everything regarding Cathay - we were (apparently!) part of the family (when it suited Cathay), receiving weekly updates and messages from all sorts of Employment Experience Managers and people we had never heard of before, made to wear Cathay logos and do everything the Cathay way. So please, give me a break with the separate airline talk...
BUT, fair enough, if what you call that "separate airline" was not really doing well, loosing the customers, pilots or cabin crew causing trouble, getting demerit points for problems in the operation, not being allowed to expand, bleeding financially....yes, it would be time to close that "separate airline". And as a pilot with high seniority, that's where you loose out. Seniority doesn't protect you from an airline going badly and eventually going bankrupt.
But can you honestly claim this is the case for KA?
From my point of view, Cathay Pacific is taking all that Dragon build up over 35 years and throwing all the loyal employees under the bus as a thank you...
If there would be no 321s, 321NEOs and 330s going to CX, no routes to be transferred to CX - I would rest my case.
But now, junior pilots on work visas will fly the KA jets to KA destinations while KA guys with PRs - originally expats, or locals alike - will be without a job.
Look at it from this perspective;
The Cathay Pacific B747F operation - earning the money these days for "The Group".
Let's just say for a moment that the whole B747F operation would be called Cathay Dragon tomorrow and all jumbos transferred to KA.
Would you not expect the senior jumbo CX pilots to somehow have a place in that Cathay Dragon operation?
Or would it be fair that all these pilots were asked to leave the company, leave their house, their home, their country, their friends - while KA cadets with a year of seniority and young expats with work visas would be dispatched to run the HKG-ANC flights as of next month?
At least just admit it stinks, please.
I don't expect Cathay to be a fair employer - but I would expect a little bit of empathy from fellow Hong Kong pilots that we used to rub shoulders with in the briefing office just last month.
Cathay Pacific: World’s Top 10 Cleanest Airline
for five years in a row — Skytrax