Survey results are in...

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Reuters, AAP agencies. 14 July, 2014

Hong Kong based airline, Cathay Pacific, today released results from an internal, company wide survey that is making waves across the global airline industry.

In May-June of this year, the Hong Kong flag carrier asked all of its employees to participate in a voluntary survey. Aimed primarily at discerning the level of job satisfaction amongst its 30,000+ employees, the survey questionnaire had both general questions answerable by all employee groups, and questions targeted to specific departments within the airline, such as catering, bathroom/janitorial and uniforms.

Whilst the results of the survey reveal some surprises, it's not all "plane sailing" for the Swire run carrier.

Cathay spokesperson Wepu Tui shared some insight: "The survey was aimed primarily at discerning the level of job satisfaction amongst our 30,000+ employees," but noted that "the results of the survey reveal some surprises, it's not all "plane sailing."

Tui made special mention of the results of the questionnaire filled out by the flight crew department of Cathay Pacific, but conceded that the relatively poor turnout was due in part to pilots flying and not having access to the internet.

"Many of our flight crew had to fly during the survey months, May and June, and we don't have inflight internet access as of yet, so that no doubt contributed to the relatively low pilot return on the surveys," he said.

Tui added that the management of Cathay were at the forefront in the airline industry in arresting this disheartening, but not unexpected return. "We're putting in place a policy of inflight web access for flight crew so that future surveys, company policy changes and Intraweb home page updates can be readily accessed by the crew. We're moving too towards a paperless cockpit, so crew are free to send a fax or paper report of how the paperless cockpit is working out. Letters of confirmation of receipt of paper reports about the paperless cockpit will be forwarded to crews individual mail boxes."

Asked about the general level of satisfaction amongst employee groups, and pilots in particular, Tui was effusive in his praise for the survey results.
"There were a few standouts," he proudly noted. "Fully 12% of the pilot group didn't strongly agree that their rosters were fatiguing and at times unworkable, so that's a great result for us. It shows our policies are working, our profit targets are in place and the general level of satisfaction with catering is at an all time high of 88%, matched dollar for dollar with our load factors."

Questioned on the correlation between the pilot rosters and catering, Tui noted that only if pilots were on duty and flying could they be eating the catering, supplied free of charge he added, so therefore the strong non-agreement with rosters reflected the commonly held management view that fuel policy was adequate and the circadian disruptions were in line with cargo uploads from the mainland and South East Asia.

"As a company we pride ourselves on supporting our staff to do their jobs. The flight ops personnel have almost unanimously agreed that flight crew operating manuals are on board the aircraft, a near perfect score. We're very happy with this result."

Claims that the piloting crew were dissatisfied with recent company and union negotiations on pay and rosters are unfounded, according to Mr Tui. "There weren't any questions in the survey on that, so it's not true. All our flight ops crew are happy and this shows in the ratio of flights that end in a landing. Again, a perfect score."

"It's a clear demonstration that our company car parking policies are sound, and our weather department is generally up to date. With summer set in and the weather warm, it's important that information be current and up to date. To mitigate any potential roster or pay issue with crew, we've employed an extra carpark attendant to ensure the summer runs smoothly."

Reuters/AAP press