Flight100
With all due respect, as you appear from your verbiage to be in CX in a position that is probably responsible for implementing this scheme, it isn’t the same and you very well know it. There are a number of glaring differences.
1. From 1988 to 2009 it was only for locals. As you have said from 2009 it is open to everyone.
2. From 1988 to 2009 it was only open to applicants with little or no previous aviation experience. Those that had experience joined as DESO’s or DEFO’s on full expat terms. Since 2009 those that would have come through the DESO or DEFO route were conveniently renamed iCadets just like all the other iCadets with no experience. The only difference is they come through the “Transitional Course”, i.e. renamed DESO course. The company had to re-introduce DESO’s or should I call them Transition Course iCadets because the number of new pilots required over the next 5-10 years cannot be supplied through the ab initio iCadet scheme. For every ab initio cadet, 5 transition course iCadets can be trained.
3. The reason why CX didn’t in the past offer housing to cadets was because it was an “Expat” allowance and the fact they were from Hong Kong, they weren’t expats, just in the same way those pilots with CX that are based in their own country don’t get a housing allowance. Do you get it now?
4. Most cadets today aren’t locals but expats. They don’t have the family support network that a local has and therefore don’t have the option to live with family in the early days of their CX career.
I have flown with a number of cadets recently and without exception they are all doing it very tough. What has alarmed me even more though is the number that aren’t even budgeting for their tax bill because “Quote” they can’t afford to. If this trend isn’t looked at by the company we will see a number of iCadets in the next 12 months in a serious financial mess.
By the way, the difference between what the company pays to an iCadet after 6 years of service in the form of a forgivable loan plus the cost of their training in Adelaide plus the HKPA and what they would have got in expat housing as a DESO is recouped by the company in three to four years by not having to pay the expat housing allowance. From then on the difference is icing on the cake for the company and is coming straight out of all the iCadets pockets for the rest of their career. I will leave it to you to work out how much that is.