CPdude,
You have some fair enough comments.
However if I were getting 15-18 days off a month I wouldn't be on here complaining about my roster. I just looked at 2005 to date and my best month was 13 days. I've never said the money is better at AC, only the lifestyle. The problem most CX pilots have is that they cannot distinquish between pay and lifestyle, the two are not synonymous.( as a CDN resident I pay the same taxes as someone at AC) By the way, I am working on a change that will take me out of CX in the not too distant future.
With regard to defined benefit pensions I suggest some light reading of the pension laws in Canada. A compnay sponsoring a DB plan cannot simply spend the money within the plan, it's held outside the company. What they can do, and what did happen is a company can take a contribution holiday if the fund is fully funded. (CX has been on a holiday for years for the old "A" scale scheme) AC took a holiday in 2000 while riding the wave of the tech laden stock market. The problem began when the market crashed in combination with the contribution holiday, creating an "underfunded" plan. What Victor Li wanted to do was right off the under funded portion of the plan and move staff to a defined contribution, thus removing the future risk and the obligation of topping up the years they took as holiday. Enough on that dry stuff!!
So lets touch on staff travel...CX staff pay ZED fares for travel on their own airline.. HKG-YVR-HKG aprox. 300-500 CAD on CX depending on class of service. If the info I'm given from friends at AC is correct they pay about one tenth that. Any AC staff care to comment??
tamalai, your post is disgusting!Get some professional help.