Blogsey,
I have a relative who is flying with Cathay Pacific as a JFO and told me that is is well worth applying. It's a life time chance to fly with a well known company and starting position SO on 747 - 340 - 330. Now as far as the salary during the training from what i heard, it's nothing special, somewhere around 100 dollars or so. Let's not expect everything. Bottom point is they are training the cadets and offering them a job as a SO on heavy jets and the only thing the cadets need to pay is their living expenses. Let's not be gready and be thankfull for such an opportunity. I think you need to do your research again and stop putting people off, the training is done in Australia and not in HK and if a beer in HK is worth $100 i would expect to drink beer with gold leaves in it.