Your final assumption is correct, but you have made some incorrect assertions along the way.
Leave is reliable, not at industry standards, but rarely cancelled or moved.
There are reliable rosters, and if they are moved outside the pilots plan, PRA is available and being actively used at the moment, and will continue to be so until decent rosters are produced.
You are right it is a sh@t airline flying sh@t routes, so rosters are all sh@t, so PRA will continue for the foreseeable future.
The few good, well goodish routes they have are greedily grabbed by the office brown nosers.
In a real airline, they can only select one line flight per bid period, but in HKA they claim 100 hours flight pay every month and every good patern they can find, while the line pilots are left with red eyes and 50-60 hrs a month, and importantly minimum time off in home base.
With the current low pay rates, no housing allowance, cr@p MPF, no medical insurance, peanuts for overnight expenses, poor to woeful management, it is not an airline, just a charter outfit and a money laundering exercise for the mainlanders.
Another point, virtually none of the people come from "folded airlines", maybe a European one or two, but almost all came from active airlines, CX, KA, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar to name a few, so be very careful what you claim and who you infer are third world or from folded airlines, it is not true.
Most will agree that this airline is the cr@p outfit you claim, but it has proved a useful upgrade tool for many people also.
One person did not even wait for his 500 hours after his upgrade to say bye, good boy.
. How many went to Jetstar with paid for endorsements, very good pilots
.
This trend is about to accelerate.
