Well Al E. Vator, our operation will not be in HKG, but located 570nm SE, HKG will be used for heavy letter checks only. And not a large operation either, small and friendly, with NO "union" problems.
You could be right of course about the lack of local recruits. SQ found this same problem, but solved same by going to Malaysia for many of their pilots. Wonder why CX did not do the same as there were quite a few very good candidates there....I should know as I trained many at SQ on the 707. Some very talanted guys, especially directly onto the 707, not an easy thing for a pilot with only 270 hours of light aircraft experience, as many of the locals had. But then SQ had a rather large training budget at the time....surely CX could have done the same.