Originally Posted by
Numero Crunchero
Three things to consider when comparing salaries over time....exchange rates, CoL and tax.
CoL has gone up in all our major countries of origin - houses have doubled to quadrupled alone!
Tax - HKG hasn't really changed, but Oz basing didn't pay any oz tax in 90's- things have changed since
Exchange rates....base salaries were based on 11.5 for UK (vice 16 today), 5.5 for Aus (vice 6.8 today) and around 5.8(I think) for Canada (vice 7.8 today).
So on those measures the current salary is well short, in real terms, versus the salaries that existed over a decade ago for A and B scales!
Again, if I may, an outside perspective from one of those who lives in Hong Kong and indirectly pays your wages... (please just skip the rest of this post if that's not of interest, and my apologies for the intrusion)
I can't see any way to set salaries except based on where you are employed. Having a salary level based on anything else would I am sure be regarded as discriminatory - would it be based on your passport? the place where you lived directly before joining CX? some place of your choosing where you happen to have property? or what? If you accept a long-term job in Hong Kong then it seems to me that you have to accept the Hong Kong prices, taxes, etc that come with it. That's certainly how it is in most other industries - time on fancy "expat" terms is very limited: once you are somewhere for the long term (normally more than 3 or at most 5 years) then you're no different from anyone employed locally. If you don't like Hong Kong (the climate, the food, the pollution, whatever) then find somewhere more in accord with your desires - you are in a very mobile profession with, apparently, a shortage of supply versus demand. I don't know enough about how basing works so I won't comment on that, except to say that I don't know of anywhere that CX bases pilots where there aren't a significant number of other potential employers, and it's a free market - if that's where you want to live and CX's isn't the best offer for you then the answer is obvious.
So, looking at Hong Kong, the Consumer Price Index in Hong Kong is currently at 106.7 (normalised on the average of 10/2004 -9/2005 = 100). That is still 10% LOWER than the peak in reached in May 1998, and approximately equal to the level of June 1996.
( Source:
http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/showtable...sp?tableID=052 )
Looking at property in Hong Kong, the Private Purchase index composite index is about 30% BELOW the peak it hit in 1997, and approximately equal to the level at the beginning of 1994. Private rental is about 20% below the 1997 peak, and approximately equal to the level in the second half of 1993.
( Source:
http://www.rvd.gov.hk/en/doc/statistics/his_data_4.pdf
and
http://www.rvd.gov.hk/en/doc/statistics/his_data_3.pdf respectively, supplemented by
http://www.rvd.gov.hk/en/doc/statistics/rvd1_2.pdf for the 2007 figures )
Tax is essentially unchanged.
So the nominal cost of living in Hong Kong is now more or less the same as it was in 1994-95. On this basis it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the base payscales are more or less the same also,
Comparing salaries across industries is always tricky, particularly where pilots are a quite unusual case where there are essentially just a small number of fixed levels of competence. Once you are a Captain you are equally as valuable to the employer as any other Captain (training and other responsibilities excluded since they are compensated separately as I understand it). That being so, the salary progression that you would expect in other careers based on merit as people get more responsibilities can't really happen. So to keep people interested there's a seniority-based payscale.
If you've never worked in any other job you may not realise quite how unusual this is. Very few businesses give people more money (in real terms) year after year without any increase in the value they get for that money. Where is this money supposed to come from? If profits are to continue at the same level you need either to reduce some other costs or increase your revenues. Hence, I suppose, all the "nickel 'n' diming" of passengers that goes on these days, and the quite outrageous "fuel surcharges" which are simply a scam, as the EU is now starting to realise.
I can't quickly find the HK pax payscales, but assuming the progression is similar to the US Freighter payscale (yes, a huge leap I know, so correct me if I am wrong) the increase in salary from Captain-1 to Captain-10 is about 30%. This is the REAL increase in addition to any movement in the underlying payscales (which there hasn't been in HK, because the overall cost of living now is actually lower than it was 10 years ago, and the same as it was 13-14 years ago). In pretty much any other field people would be delighted to sit in the same job for 10 years and get a 3% REAL increase in salary every year. I know I would.
As I said, this is just an outsider's perspective. My only connection to CX is that I have flown enough to be Diamond for the last 7 years, although I'm about to lose that since I don't travel on business any more and the CX service levels have dropped (whilst prices have increased substantially) such that I don't want to spend my own dime that way any more.
Now back to your regularly scheduled postings...