Piet Lood - it's bizzare how seemingly intelligent people like you still hold onto the belief that we would be better off if we had more backbone. You miss the forest for the trees.
If Ryanair can get away with what they can in Europe etc etc it's kind of cute that people like you still believe that the cx pilots in Hong Kong could somehow have done better if only they didn't answer their phones more or did CC better or didn't join training.
There is a direct correlation between:
1. Pilot contract conditions and the legal environment of countries and
2. Pilot pay and supply and demand.
Individuals not answering phones hasn't had much effect on this for a very long time.
The memberships biggest failure was the fact that we kept electing angry people onto the AOA committee who kept pushing the idea that we can somehow beat this reality.
And worse - only some had to "fight " by accepting delayed career advancement while the rest didn't have to do anything but sit on their hands ( example -JFO upgrade delays while DEFO get hired, not allowed to advance your career by joining training etc)
They would have been much better off if they had rather tried to keep a better relationship going with the grown ups. That would have led to less of a rogering right now as it's fairly clear that many no cost vindictive elements of COS18 is the parents punishing the kids for their bad behaviour...