You young 'uns will have to think about where you, and the airline, will be in 10-15 years time. Your fates are intertwined.
Cathay Pacific will be going nowhere. HKIA will be slot-limited 24 hours a day. It doesn't matter how many runways they are building, the Chinese have no intention of releasing any extra airspace to use them properly, so that they can protect their own airports and their paranoid and powerful military. There will be no extra aircraft, just a few new ones replacing the older ones.
Hong Kong will become unviable for connecting flights due to delays; already, one line of CBs shuts the joint down for hours. Businessmen will avoid. Mainland Chinese will fly direct on their own rapidly expanding airlines. CX will become 'Mong Kok Airlines'.
CX captains are relatively young, and most will remain in Hong Kong due to 'grandfathered' housing and other benefits. Command slots will be virtual 'dead mens' shoes'.
My understanding is that the new Jebel Ali airport will have five runways. How many A380's are on order by the ME3 again? There is some disturbing reading on the Middle East forum but at least there is semi-decent housing, a relatively clean environment, and expansion for the foreseeable future. You can do the hard yards there for a few years, put some money away, then quit and do something else.
At the end of that time frame: where are you going to be? Commanding a shiny A380 into Heathrow? Or filling out the CFP as a ten-year FO of a clapped-out A330 on the way to Taipei for a split duty and yet another two-crew through-the-WOCL next on the roster?
Oh, and when you get home to your wife and baby in your tiny, noisy flat, there is a letter waiting: the rapacious Hong Kong landlord has just put the rent up again.
Last edited by Captain Dart; 7th Aug 2015 at 23:11.