It the FF's were optional, they would definitely die the way of the AEB lunches. Most pilots at Cathay don't want to talk to the managers because nothing ever gets done. It is just a way to get your career (what is left of one) slammed down the dumpsters if you speak up.
All our flying managers want to know is that you tell them it is a great company and they are doing a great job. Every one of them are ineffective.
The pilots do not have any say in their lives and that is the way they want to keep it. How long have they been trying to fix the roster? It never gets changed because they don't want it to change, even if the flying managers say they are trying.
In a couple of years their will be another shuffle and some new managers will come in and say they will try to get something done. They will try to start up some kind of communication with the Pilots to say hey "I am trying to change things" forum.
This whole thing is just a tummy rubbing exercise when the whole flight operation is dying of stomach cancer. It doesn't help, but it makes you look like you are doing something. You either treat the cause of the symptoms or fop is going to die a slow and painful death. Or you are going to have an accident; anyway the results are the same.
Under the threat or even theoretical threat of a union, Shefferman (a Union-Buster) advised management to institute a device called an employee roundtable. Purportedly designed to give workers a way to air their grievances and influence company policy, in reality the roundtable becomes management?s tap into the worker grapevine and it?s repressive thumb on the informal worker power structure. The regular group meetings provided management with a system for planting information, as well as for identifying and controlling the leaders among employees."
Confessions of a Union Buster
Read the book Gentlemen!
Good luck to all the new joiners.
(A Classic captain trainee attempting to check out on the 'glass cockpit'of an A-340.) "Now I know what a dog feels like watching TV."