What would have made sense was to right-size the manpower to approximately match the amount of work that was left for the business. This is what every other airline has done, in this downturn and others in the past when the downturn proves to be longer than short term. It makes no sense to bleed cash in form of paying salaries to staff staying at home for OVER 1.5 years after it had become very apparent this was not going away soon. Before someone says "oh but jobs saved" It's a business after all, not a charity. They've shortened the survival ability of the business having made the decision they made. With the number of pilots leaving cathay at an average of 8 per month pre-covid and now 40 a month, let's look at exacrly who is leaving. The very junior crew with little or no experience have nowhere to go. Nobody will hire them anytime soon. The very senior with 5 or less years left to retire likely won't leave because they hope to be able to stretch it out until retirement without taking a big dip in earnings during the last years of their career. Those who fall between these two groups will be the first ones to get jobs elsewhere and go. The very segment who will be in line to be the captains and senior FOs of a year or two from now. The ones who will be carrying the bulk of operational expertise... oh except they will also be the first ones to leave when the hiring starts! So who exactly are they expecting to keep this operation going... with any efficiency OR without the occasional hull loss?! The very ones they need are the same who are already in process of exodus, some are even forced to via base closures. The exodus will become bigger as market picks up.cathay already has absolutely no hope of training even 40 a month to replace or maintain the crew numbers even if they can attract and hire with whatever CoS they offer and to whom. They've never had the training capacity to train that many, even when hiring direct entry. Whatever amount they can train and put on the line will be constantly going thru the revolving door anyway requiring to replace even those. Exactly the most valuable crew they need to keep are the ones leaving already. Keeping all the crew and cutting their pay & benefits to half and thinking "we've had out cake and eaten it too" will prove to be a major mistake. When what you're doing is the opposite of what everyone else is doing something and you decide to do the opposite, that should be the big clue you're making a mistake.