The over-riding trend here is money: who can make the most out of starry-eyed cadets thinking they're getting a free and fast tracked ride onto a pretty jet.
I am appalled at the level of "it's too hard" to go via a traditional route of working to earn for flight training, let alone the mere mention of actually doing what's been referred to as "hard yards" in GA for a few thousand hours where the real learning comes from. Generation Y I think it's called.
Cathay used to be a great airline: a standard setter. Now it is
just another airline where safety is nothing more than a sales pitch. It's all about money and nothing else. They'll use and abuse the dreams of wannabes to make that money: the iCadet scheme.
I feel sorry for these kids being taken advantage of AND the utter naivety of the bigger long term picture.
Such a shame that Cathay's name is being drawn into conversations with the likes of AirAsia, Jetstar and other low cost airlines. What was at the pinnacle is now eagerly racing to join the cheap and nasty due to nothing but greed and the acceptance of it.
Whilst I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears, here's a thread of us with more laps around this rock than many cadets have had hot meals think:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/4...s-slammed.html
You kids are only thinking short term, not long. Em773ER has written a good breakdown on some costs but there is very little if at all allowance for unforeseen costs or as mentioned somewhere about quality of life. If "slotsdown" is the kind of applicant drawn to CX (and he/she obviously is) then CX is dead as the airline it once was.