Well Done NC
Have been going through the numbers and what is quoted by the AOA and the company does seem valid with regard to the % pay increases. To throw a little more mud in the water and quite possibly food for thought as to the inequality of the whole pay structure consider the following. At some point you may wish to take a base in Australia, if your an antipodean, and looking at Senior Captain 1 your pay at current exchange rates under CoS08 for year 09 would be 12% greater for living in Australia and this does not include HDP. If we look at HDP for year 09 at the exchange rate of 6.8 then an SC1 based in Aus will receive 36% more in HKD than his counterpart in HK. My point being hear that a certain Mr NR was quite adamant in '99 that a premium had to be paid for HK based crew due to the cost of living. From what I can tell the cost of living is still extremely high and HK is rated as the 3rd most expensive city in the world and for this we will pay you 12% less in actual salary and 36% less in HDP in comparison to an Aus base and yes you should consider this a good deal. By the way with age 65 retirement a base in Aus will not be available for another 6-7yrs so even if you wanted to take the higher pay on your base you can't because a certain A scaler that should of retired can continue on at home on an even greater % differential than the figures I have quoted above. Don't get me started on this one. However the concern is not that of A scale which should remain but the fact that nothing has been done to address the large disparity in pay scales. If I have to remain in HK due to bases being full and I wish to retire to my home port then I need to be compensated with a higher salary to cater for cost of living and exchange rate movements. There was a lot made of these issues by the AOA prior to negotiations and nothing has come of it. If the company wants unified FO salary then this should also apply to Command pay. Also to quote a fiqure of 64% for SFO pay relative to that of command pay on USAB surely the same figure is applicable in HK. However it is not with SFO6 compared with SC6 it is 70%. The rationale here is that either a captain is worth less in HK or an FO is worth more. All of the points that I have highlighted just show discrepencies in the deal that has been published and the fact that, on first impressions, very few members of the aircrew body should see this as a good deal. Tend to agree with NC and that is do the research yourself and make an informed decision about your future.