Originally Posted by
flipthebird
I'm surprised!! I thought there was a clear road map to promotion given the large number of SOs existed in the system!!
If that's the case, how will they decide who's eligible to move up the rank? By appointment? See who has better relationship with / who is loyal to the Manager? Like how Beijing hand picked the Chief Executive? That would be so messy, so chaotic and so unfair.
Thank you, Boulanger. This has been really helpful!!
Yeah, you'd figure an organization as large as Cathay with 77 years of history would actually have a road map. You'd also figure that given their job ad on their own website, which goes from Cadet -> SO -> FO -> Captain that your career would be in straight line. It isn't a straight line. The cause? Probably corporatism and a lot of corner cutting.
Prior to COVID and the large contractual cuts the cockpit crew endured, moving up the ranks was reasonably assured. There was a thing called "bypass pay" where every time the company hires an external FO in front of you, you would still get FO pay. The CAD also had it written down that pilots should not be expected to hold the P2X rating for more than 5 years. There was also a seniority system that spanned across all the fleets, where being the most senior SO generally ensured that you are next in line for a promotion. Post-covid,
all of that is gone. There is no bypass pay, the written rule from the CAD mysteriously disappeared, and the seniority system became a fleet-based seniority where your career prospects depended on which fleet you were lucky enough to get on. Plus you have to serve as a ground staff for two months because of a self-induced training bottleneck as a result of the company chasing away half their cockpit crews. Oh, and they also try to lure you to Hong Kong Express because of their self-induced training bottleneck.
How they decide people move up the ranks these days does seem a bit arbitrary. To be fair, they can't deviate from their engineered fleet seniority too much, but if you join as a cadet and subsequently an SO, this is all you have to hold on to.