Originally Posted by
1201alarm
I never understood why someone would become a radio operator in nowadays aviation business. If you are not with a major/legacy/unionized carrier, you need hours and experience as quickly as possible to master the jungle of international aviation. So the dumbest thing is to start your career as a radio operator - you just loose precious years.
May be the reasoning was different under the A scale, as there was a clear career path to a lot of gold and guys taking the radio operator position already had lots of valuable experience which anyways gave them options in case.
Why? At the time I joined many people wanted a career with a major airline that wasn't at a LCC. Cathay was a career airline where one could grow and end up on decent money with quality of life even If you had to step through the hoops to start. Times changed, many of the COS18 SO's have no intention to remain at Cathay. Some I fly with have used the pandemic to boost their non-aviation careers and will end up stepping away from CX/HK/Aviation completely. Spending years as a SO with no real future has gotten many bent out of shape as well.