Is CX still a good choice for new pilot?

[Caelius.P]

Greetings!
I just saw there is a Second Officer direct entry program in CX website. I took my FAA Commercial Piot License with Instrument Rating(With 500hrs only) in the United State when I was in university there. I'm now a post-graduate student in HKUST, and I want to work as a pilot instead of a geek wallow in data anaysis.
I've read some topics here in pprune that lots of pilot in CX were discontented because of COS18.To be honest, the salary (530000 as SO,900000? as FO) sounds OK for me, because in Mainland China local FO only got 25k-30k a month, CAPT operates narrow-body domestic flight only got 50k-70k. I prefer SQ but I don't have ICAO rating/ATPL/type rating for any aircraft. Is CX good for a new pilot or CX is my only choice?

[CxEx2]

Greetings!
I just saw there is a Second Officer direct entry program in CX website. I took my FAA Commercial Piot License with Instrument Rating(With 500hrs only) in the United State when I was in university there. I'm now a post-graduate student in HKUST, and I want to work as a pilot instead of a geek wallow in data anaysis.
I've read some topics here in pprune that lots of pilot in CX were discontented because of COS18.To be honest, the salary (530000 as SO,900000? as FO) sounds OK for me, because in Mainland China local FO only got 25k-30k a month, CAPT operates narrow-body domestic flight only got 50k-70k. I prefer SQ but I don't have ICAO rating/ATPL/type rating for any aircraft. Is CX good for a new pilot or CX is my only choice?

This must be a wind up

[cxorcist]

Are you genuinely asking or have you already made up your mind and just seeking affirmation like most of those on here willing to jump at a very bad deal???

[Caelius.P]

Seems it is sooooooooooo bad?

[Caelius.P]

I still wondering right now. I've got some other choices for my career. But the salary sounds 'good' from CX compare to many other jobs. You know, it is hard to find a proper job this year.

[Caelius.P]

I really need help for my decision. I am a hobby flyer. I love aviation since young,flying RC models,PC simulators,and tiny C172/DA42 for fun.But I never go inside the airline industry as a professional pilots before. From the ADs of CX,the job seems quite good,but I would not totally believe ADs because I'm not 3 years old now. But every job/company have two sides. As you know it is very hard to hunt a proper job in this chaos city this year as a fresh graduate. I got some other choices work as white collar in office taking 20-25k at the first beginning. I may be far more competitive as a data analyser because my academic background, and don't have competitive as a pilot because no experience and ratings.
I enjoy the Work Hard Play Hard lifestyle. Lots of OTs as a white collar work in Central is doomsday for me. So... Does CX give the promise base annual salary? No meetings/trainings in day-off or between duty？

[Apple Tree Yard]

If not for the comedy value, this place would be worthless. Priceless!

[Dilbert68]

Are you genuinely asking or have you already made up your mind and just seeking affirmation like most of those on here willing to jump at a very bad deal???

Clearly the latter. No experience, English level 3, willing to accept conditions that an actual pilot with experience would laugh at. CX will take you with open arms.

[Slasher1]

Ya know, I kinda enjoy going to a car dealer and shopping around; especially if I don't particularly need a new car.

Invariably, at some point a salesman will attempt to place me in something well beyond what I would need or even want and then attempt to sell me on how I might be able to afford it. I always like saying "well, if I really wanted to I could probably leverage enough capital to buy this dealership--but for me that'd be pretty dumb and is something I don't want to do despite the fact it seems like a nice place and you seem like a nice enough guy."

Likewise, there is a continuous stream of 'borrow money from me' credit card (at some teaser introductory rate followed by something stupid like 21%) averts in the mail. Or take out some type of mortgage equity loan (at again a higher interest rate than a thinking man would pay).

In fact, teaser rates and rationalization almost made the world economy collapse in 2008 (and did wind up significantly devaluing some currencies over a span of a few years).

Bottom line is you can talk yourself into doing some really stupid things if you have powerful rationalization skills. But given the copious information on conditions here there is not a soul who will have any sympathy for your self made plight. Best o' luck !

[ksksyujk]

don't worry about it

[ksksyujk]

I really need help for my decision. I am a hobby flyer. I love aviation since young,flying RC models,PC simulators,and tiny C172/DA42 for fun.But I never go inside the airline industry as a professional pilots before.From the ADs of CX,the job seems quite good,but I would not totally believe ADs because I'm not 3 years old now. But every job/company have two sides. As you know it is very hard to hunt a proper job in this chaos city this year as a fresh graduate. I got some other choices work as white collar in office taking 20-25k at the first beginning. I may be far more competitive as a data analyser because my academic background, and don't have competitive as a pilot because no experience and ratings.
I enjoy the Work Hard Play Hard lifestyle. Lots of OTs as a white collar work in Central is doomsday for me. So... Does CX give the promise base annual salary? No meetings/trainings in day-off or between duty？

Hey Caelius, the package from CX COS18 is still great and it is still the best you can realistically get these days. Where else can you find an airline job who would provide full type training for people with no or very low hours. Yes you have to repay 50% of the training cost for 3 years after you join but even with that, the package is still way better than most of the graduate jobs in HK (Gov't AO is on pay scale 27 which is about the same as a starting SO) Do you really want to be a flying instructor, cropdusting or skydiving pilots with a pitful salary in some outback town you can't even pronounce?

It is a fact that pilot package is not going get any better and keep looking back to how great A/B scale was isn't going to make you any happier. So if flying is what you love to do then study well for your interview and start your career sooner rather than later. Don't worry about all those "you have no experience/ can't do an IGS 13/ ICAO 3/ scarping the barrel" type comments you will no doubt find here or on the line, keep working and studying hard; see you on the line soon.

[Climb150]

If time from SO to FO was 18 months and not 4-5 years it might be a slightly better proposition. Anyone who tries to tell me SO time is less than that you are being lied to.

There are decent companies out there but people working for good companies have little reason to come on pprune and complain.

[Oddball77]

Greetings!
I just saw there is a Second Officer direct entry program in CX website. I took my FAA Commercial Piot License with Instrument Rating(With 500hrs only) in the United State when I was in university there. I'm now a post-graduate student in HKUST, and I want to work as a pilot instead of a geek wallow in data anaysis.
I've read some topics here in pprune that lots of pilot in CX were discontented because of COS18.To be honest, the salary (530000 as SO,900000? as FO) sounds OK for me, because in Mainland China local FO only got 25k-30k a month, CAPT operates narrow-body domestic flight only got 50k-70k. I prefer SQ but I don't have ICAO rating/ATPL/type rating for any aircraft. Is CX good for a new pilot or CX is my only choice?
900K per annum as FO 'if' you fly the required hours. Question is how will you feel sitting next to someone who owns two houses in HK and one back in Oz or UK doing the same job as you’re doing but the only difference is he/she joined the company ten years earlier than you did. If it's ok for you, then join.

[Hey_pahlot]

Excuse my ignorance, but are they complaining that they aren't getting the guaretneed 581,608 HKD or because they aren't getting close to the projected 759,800 HKD?

[cxorcist]

CoS18 has to die. It’s simply embarrassing that guys are accepting this, a true abortion of a contract. The guaranteed salary is not livable in HK, not with any reasonable standard of living. Single? Maybe. Hitched? Hope s/he has a decent paying job. Kids? Forget about it. I feel sorry for guys and gals on this deal. It’s one thing not to have housing. This is a joke, and you’re a joke if you accept it. It’s D scale, at best!

[Slasher1]

CoS18 has to die. It’s simply embarrassing that guys are accepting this, a true abortion of a contract. The guaranteed salary is not livable in HK, not with any reasonable standard of living. Single? Maybe. Hitched? Hope s/he has a decent paying job. Kids? Forget about it. I feel sorry for guys and gals on this deal. It’s one thing not to have housing. This is a joke, and you’re a joke if you accept it. It’s D scale, at best!

Question: What’s the difference between a $10 whore and a $500 whore ?

Answer: The $500 whore still has some sense of self value and self respect.

[cxorcist]

Question: What’s the difference between a $10 whore and a $500 whore ?

Answer: The $500 whore still has some sense of self value and self respect.

A crude way of viewing the situation, but shockingly accurate.

[CanadaGooseJacket]

Hello,

I have heard elsewhere that hiring is currently frozen for this position?
Can somebody in the know shed some light on the situation?
Will more SOs be needed in the near future?

Thank you

[oriental flyer]

The job may look attractive when you simply look at the salary on offer . However when you get to HK you are in for some serious sticker shock . The cost of living is very high in comparison to most other countries , rent is ridiculous for what you get , never mind the cost of electricity , food , entertainment . But hey if you’re hell bent Go for your life but don’t say you weren’t warned

[Natca]

Its confirmed, pilot recruitmemt has stopped / been “suspended”

[CanadaGooseJacket]

Would you happen to know why? And for how long?

[Fly747]

Its confirmed, pilot recruitmemt has stopped / been “suspended”
It has to be before today's UPL FCN.

[Natca]

Would you happen to know why? And for how long?

By the sounds of the letter its going to be awhile. No reasons given but you can imply a few potential reasons if you read the news.

[cxorcist]

Would you happen to know why? And for how long?
Enjoy bush flying in the Canadian Arctic!!! It’s better for your long term development as a pilot and career if you end up at Westjet or Air Canada, etc. CX is a graveyard. Why dont you guys believe it? So dumb.

[CanadaGooseJacket]

Enjoy bush flying in the Canadian Arctic!!! It’s better for your long term development as a pilot and career if you end up at Westjet or Air Canada, etc. CX is a graveyard. Why dont you guys believe it? So dumb.

I am not interested in bush flying at all, and definitely not interested in living in the Arctic. Westjet and Air Canada would be great, now that we can all agree on..!
I would much rather live in HK doing 3 trips a month for CAD 130,000 than 6 legs a day in a Q for CAD 36,000. The houses here are also 2M, not much different from HK, really, except the salary is 1/3, and the tax is double. Also, you'll need a car in Canada, so after the expenses, you'll have about 50 cents left to put in your savings account. Can you see the problem? Even the first-year SO salary exceeds the 5th year AC salary, assuming you can even get the job.

Graveyard? Why is that.

[AllWobbly]

CoS18 has to die. It’s simply embarrassing that guys are accepting this, a true abortion of a contract. The guaranteed salary is not livable in HK, not with any reasonable standard of living. Single? Maybe. Hitched? Hope s/he has a decent paying job. Kids? Forget about it. I feel sorry for guys and gals on this deal. It’s one thing not to have housing. This is a joke, and you’re a joke if you accept it. It’s D scale, at best!

I think more to the point is the fact that HKG is imploding irrespective of which contract one is employed on. To be honest I can’t see any reason to hitch your star to any of the available wagons in town. Lackluster governance and being sidelined by the PRC are enough to finish it off and then there’s the trade war.

[bm330]

Can't fix stupid.

Cathay has cast it's existence on foolish kids who don't do their homework. Mr Cooked Goose will be just another in a long line of wanabees who sit and moan about the old guys who did nothing to protect new joiners. Can't wait for the endless bitching about how the recruiters sold them on a crap deal.

[CanadaGooseJacket]

Can't fix stupid.

Cathay has cast it's existence on foolish kids who don't do their homework. Mr Cooked Goose will be just another in a long line of wanabees who sit and moan about the old guys who did nothing to protect new joiners. Can't wait for the endless bitching about how the recruiters sold them on a crap deal.

Crap deal? How about in Canada where some of the airlines expect you to load cargo for 1-2 years for minimum wage before giving you a shot at the right seat? Then when you become an FO the pay is even worse.
What about spending another 15,000 on an instructor's rating to make CAD15,000-20,000 a year? And have to have a second job and work 7 days a week just to pay your rent.
What about making it through the above to finally end up at a regional that ends up paying you CAD 36,000 a year, which is only 15% higher than the legal minimum wage?!!

Crap deal? SO salary is a dream, even if it was 30% less, it would be better than anything I could possibly imagine.
House prices in HKG? Who cares, I'm never going to own a home in Canada either, I can barely pay my rent. If I can even just save a thousand dollars a month my life would be so much better than it is now.

[cxorcist]

I am not interested in bush flying at all, and definitely not interested in living in the Arctic. Westjet and Air Canada would be great, now that we can all agree on..!
I would much rather live in HK doing 3 trips a month for CAD 130,000 than 6 legs a day in a Q for CAD 36,000. The houses here are also 2M, not much different from HK, really, except the salary is 1/3, and the tax is double. Also, you'll need a car in Canada, so after the expenses, you'll have about 50 cents left to put in your savings account. Can you see the problem? Even the first-year SO salary exceeds the 5th year AC salary, assuming you can even get the job.

Graveyard? Why is that.
Read the news much? Think the future is bright in HK? Think you’re actually gonna do 3 LHs a month for your entire CX career? You aren’t even going to sit in a window seat for at least four years. By then, whatever flying skills you do have will be long gone, which isn’t to say you’re qualified to fly WBs now. You wanna live in fantasy land, go right ahead, but remember these posts when you’re tempted to complain because CX just pinched huge amounts of variable pay off you and the choice is between paying the rent, running the AC, or buying food at the grocery. You’re gonna wish you were on a trip, any sh!tty trip, instead of being stuck in your crappy HK apartment on unpaid reserve with no money to do anything fun or even go home on “staff travel” to see your family. Good luck!!!

[Bokpiel]

Mr Cooked Goose will be just another in a long line of wanabees who sit and moan about the old guys who did nothing to protect new joiners. Can't wait for the endless bitching about how the recruiters sold them on a crap deal.

Are you kidding me? It’s YOU old guys who can’t stop moaning, not the new joiners! Just look on pprune for proof. Always the same sad keyboard warriors who keep bashing the new guys and who complain over and over again about absolutely everything. We get it - CX is not what it used to be. The whole industry is not what it used to be. Accept it, stay, leave, do what you want, whatever.

[GMEDX]

And then on your unpaid reserve you’ll get called out to crew-up in the sim cos you’re the one that doesn’t get paid for that either. It’ll be the middle of the night too so you’ll have to get a taxi to work and you can’t claim that back.

[Natca]

These post by cxe and gmedx are soo true! Exact same feelings I get about them. Please read the above posters all that is true and im not even on the variable pay cos18!

We dont get parking spots anywhere (assuming you can afford a car) , no public transport after midnight, the costs of these sims add up. Get a while month of crew up or you initial sims ... pay up!

[Slasher1]

lol

I see the wannabes deep in denial and it reminds me of a couple of kids standing on a bridge overlooking a river with a whole bunch of ice chunks in it. With a sign that says "Danger--no swimming."

"I'm gonna go swimming"

"Don't do it -- that water is really really cold"

"No it's not, and I'm used to cold water."

"You will drown -- if you jump in there I can't help you and you'll never make it to shore"

"You don't know what your'e talking about and I know what I'm doing. I'm used to the cold."

"Fine--then jump. I DARE YA."

[main_dog]

Crap deal? SO salary is a dream, even if it was 30% less, it would be better than anything I could possibly imagine.
House prices in HKG? Who cares, I'm never going to own a home in Canada either, I can barely pay my rent. If I can even just save a thousand dollars a month my life would be so much better than it is now.

There it is in a nutshell, lower requirements enough and of course you will find someone hungry for the job. New joiners are no longer entering the profession hoping to make a better life for themselves than they would with a “normal” job, or even expecting to ever own a home. Once, surviving military training and deployment, or surviving GA/ flight instructing or the bush was a requirement before getting a shot at a jet job (let alone an intercontinental wide body). Your experience then commanded a commensurate salary, after a few years on the seniority list. Just ten years ago, five thousand hours of flying time would barely get you an interview with CX, these days it’s more like fifty or five hundred at best. You get what you pay for: in this case, you get inexperience.

As Bokpiel says the industry is not what it once was, and it will only get worse before we are replaced completely by automation. In the meantime accidents (due to poorly trained/inexperienced crews inadequately responding to unusual situations which require actual flying skills and hard-earned experience) will occur ever more often, driving the regulators and public to push for ever more automation...

This is why the one thing I suggest to junior crew joining nowadays is to cater for a plan B outside of flying, as I don’t think anyone under forty today will see a full career as a pilot. As for us old f@rts, we can count ourselves lucky we saw a full and half-decent career at all: I’m sure glad I’m not starting out now.

[cxorcist]

Plan B!!! They can’t even come up with a decent Plan A. I suppose moving back in with your parents is an option for this generation that we never even considered as adults.

[cxorcist]

You can all bitch about new joiners as much as you want.

The truth is, there is only one to blame for the never ending downward spiral of decreasing contracts in Cathay Pacific - the pilots, because they never fight back.

The ex-gratia payment is being constructed in a way that it represents the equivalent of a 13th month for most employees, except the pilot group.
That is not a coincidence.
13th month is not being paid to the pilot group because they can.
No doubt, you are correct. But now, safety is being compromised. Are the pilots to be held responsible for that too? Maybe, those in training passing these non-pilots through the system certainly are a big part of the problem.

[cxorcist]

The question is to what extent will safety be compromised ?

Other airlines keep their aircraft in the air with inexperienced guys as well.
The risk assessment probably concluded that 10+ years of experience of flying as an SO/FO starting with zero hours would be sufficient to become a Cathay Captain in the future.
Worst case the convenience exists to blame pilot error as the root cause of an accident and not a decision, which was made 15 years ago by someone in the office.
Sadly, you are probably correct again. Safety is now being hedged. Hope the punters don’t catch wind of it.

[DropKnee]

You folks are right. CX pilots are the biggest blowhards you will ever encounter. Big tuff guys who will do nothing when it is time to fight. They historically ask the outsider to do the dirty work. I know, left after 14 years.
I will tell you. It's a toxic place to be. I fell for the palace on the hill too. It quickly turns to crap. Aided by small penis and pasty skinned aussies and brits. All willing to stab a fellow aviator in the back for $$.