SIC said ... "2. Pilot shortages will eventually be eradicated by huge cadet schemes. These cadets will be signed up for cheap long contracts and will fill all the slots in future. Ie. once again it will do nothing to improve your conditions cause a local cadet with a big bond/low starting salary/no housing and education allowance will cost the company a lot less over a 25 year career than an expat ever will."
Ahh, I hate to shoot down your theory, but do you know how long the Cadet program takes to pump out a qualified (and I use the term loosely) airline pilot? There is too much lag in that program to help out with any shortages today. As someone already pointed out, if there is a shortage TODAY, then the only option is to poach and recriut qualified applicants TODAY, not ones that will be qualified in a few years.
The Cadet program is a politically fueled system that greases some pamls somewhere along the buracratic chain. If CX wanted an all cadet airlne they could have done it a long time ago. The accountants might want that, but there are barriers to achieving that, otherwise it would have happened already.
Make no mistake, we (as well as most airlines arround the world) are scraping the proverbial barrel for applicants. Think of it as sucking soda through a straw. The glass is almost empty, but we are still getting some fluid through the straw...its just the fluid that's been sitting around the bottom of the glass. The problem is that more money doesn't fill the glass back up, it just tilts the glass so you get more fluid through your straw while other straws run dry (for example, mainland china carriers).
So, if you are Cathay management, what do you do? Do you wait until the glass is empty to tilt it in your direction, or do you do it now and get all the qualified applicants you can. You also have to keep in mind that Cathay is now also dealing with higher than normal attrition. Why else would they have offered A SCALE to retain the top of the list? That is a last ditch attempt before they have to reach desperate measures.