IFB
Hi IFB,
A belated welcome to your second career - hope the RAF or RAAF or USAF was fun and that the training your received at the taxpayers expense is still up to the excellent standards we expect. Sure that the accrued retirement benefits are also of some comfort in this harsh world.
Now you are 5 years into your professional career, it seems as though you are actually not reflecting the "glass half full" position but rather "the sky i falling" Chicken Little position. If you take you position that many other pilots - some of which you know - are facing redundancy and pay cuts as a reason for the professional pilots at this successful airline not to protect and advance their careers then you will never see any improvement over your career.
I have been in the airlines for over 3 decades and can say, without fear of contradiction that there are always airlines that are facing financial pressures and pilots that are facing the prospect of changing jobs. Cathay Pacific has always used these financially stressed airlines as a ready source of highly trained professional pilots - just ask your colleagues on the flight deck where they worked before.
If you take your position to its logical conclusion then the professional pilot group will never see an improvement in terms and conditions for the rest of their careers because there will always be some group or airline that is facing a financial meltdown - even in "good times", often because of strategic decisions made outside of their control - e.g. Swissair which was driven into the ground (financially) because of the desire of the CEO and board to acquire other airlines in a business plan that was flawed - Sabena, Air Limoges and the other regional airlines that Swissair acquired lead to the failure of the parent company even when other airlines were making hay in the sunshine times.
The success of Cathay Pacific has been generated over the past 60+ years by a combination of factors - good location, good political connections, cheap local support labour, excellent standards, almost monopolistic market conditions, minimalist regulation and labour laws which have been ignored or barely respected in the past (see Cartel prosecutions and Labour Department findings against the company), excellent reactions to the major changes in market conditions, etc. All of these factors have generated massive returns for the original investors, shareholders and also used to provide excellent terms and conditions for the professional pilots who moved their families for a hardship posting in the Far East.
You will say that we have moved on and you are perfectly correct - HK is no longer a hardship posting and it is no longer necessary for a new joiner to have 10-15 years experience BUT the correction to the terms and conditions for new joiners more than recognises the change in entry requirements. Cathay Pacific has continued to benefit from rumours of being the best paid pilots in the world - something that has been a dream for a couple of decades now.
I would recommend that you consider what is in the best long term interest of both your ex-colleagues and yourself and family. Do you honestly believe that a massively profitable company like Cathay Pacific reducing the wages for its professional pilots is going to help your ex-colleagues regain their long term, career earnings potential? Someone has to be the leader and that is best to be the the group that is best able to afford it. Don't ask BA or United to be the pace setters when they have financial difficulties.
If you wish to raise the issue of some pilots in the world being financially hurt at the moment, the best thing you can do is to support them and to support the improvement in terms and conditions for the professional pilots in the successful airlines around the world which will give your friends the ability and choice to move to improve their families' prospects.
May you have a long, successful and well remunerated career at one of the most profitable airlines in the world.
FF