It's just doesn't make good business sense to run an airline like CX does. If you look at it closely, they turn down most of the people whom they interviewed for pilot jobs and creating tremendous roadblocks to move through the ranks. They hold the captain rank so high that they would rather hold the airline back than upgrade anybody to the leftseat! Talk about bizarre. I DO NOT for 1 second believe that the candidates who failed their command courses were not suitable as these people have been with CX for nearly 10 years some even more. The year I was there, most upgrade candidates failed, either by the post-training review board or being CAT B where you are not even allowed to take a course. At the end of the day, what is Cathay Pacific? Is it not an airline that provides transportation from A to B and therefore need warm bodies in the cockpit to make this happen? Do they not realise that they (the 3rd floor) are holding the airline back with this boot-camp style management?
Those airplanes are not going to fly themselves, they are going to need (and very desperately so) people to occupy those cockpits of the "Shiny" 777s that are due to show up or face the embarassing alternative of parking jets.
For all the hoops that a Cathay pilot has to jump through, does it make CX any safer than anybody else? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Cathay pilots are put through 10 times more work to achieve the same results as QANTAS, ANZ, UAL and the rest of them out there.
Mr. Philip Chen, please lighten up and make some changes, the ship is sinking.
