BOP
 

Did I hear/mishear that an amended/revised Biz Op Plan was imminent?

If so any early indicators of what may be involved?

:confused:

New BOP due to hit the streets before the end of the month.

From what I understand the most significant effects are on the 744. Basically a pitch of 3 months unpaid leave across the fleet, with 4 more aircraft parked before 1st June.

On the 77 fleet, 3x 772's will go in April-June to be parked at Victorville. This is partially balanced out by the arrival of the 3 new 773-ER's arriving from this weekend to start picking up the LAX services. LAX ex-744 crew to be converted over the summer much as expected (except for their unpaid leave).

My source was not paying attention to the 'Bus plan', except to deduce that the 744 are going to be majorly f:oh:cked.

Unpaid leave cannot be forced, can it,as its then furlough or an enforced redundancy?

Voluntary unpaid leave is fine, im all for it as long as it aint me!

There are still several guys to get their DECs from the second rate sister airline, so dont go phasing out the 744 just yet, they might start squeeling, again.

I heard the O$am& Bad Landing passed, fu(kin unbelievable :ugh:.And is he in the AOA yet, haha dream on. Might need it though!

Now off I go for the sparrows f@rt on this loverly day.

Marvellous post Trevfly, up to your usual standards of lucidity and logic. Gee your other post was well received? Maybe a little more thought before posting might be the idea next time. Perhaps a little unpaid convalesence for you might in fact be a good idea eh?

Anyhow, back to the real world.

How is it that the HK Cargo Apron is full (yesterday I counted 5 of them here at once) of Fed Ex freighters still productively plying regional and global skies yet we, for whom HK is home base, are sending CX/KA freighters off to the desert? Something isn't right.

From todays Flight Global: Fedex has today exercised options for 15 Boeing 777Fs and has added options for another 15 aircraft.

Unpaid Leave
 

Unpaid leave probably cannot be forced on employees. But what a company could do is ask employees to take unpaid leave with an undertaking to repay the lost salary at a future date - for example when the next profit is declared (which I'm sure for a company like CPA won't be too far in th future) - ahead of shareholders' dividend. So effectively it would actually not be unpaid leave but it would be like a loan by the employees to help the company in a difficult time - a win win for both parties.

CX certainly doesn't need a 'loan' from its employees.

CX has excess pilots and is trying to reduce manhour costs. The difference to the bottom line is negligible but like any good business they must try and cut unnecessary costs - including paying too many people for too little work.

I would have thought that CX would revisit the voluntary unpaid leave option again to see if there were any more potential takers before announcing mandatory unpaid leave.

I fully appreciate that all airlines are facing difficult times ahead but many, although not all, of the legacy carriers are facing reduced profits from the record highs of recent years, not losses.

There are several issues that will be raised if CX try to mandate unpaid leave. Firstly is the issue of leave not allocated to officers for the 2009 year. Secondly is that, as they continue to state, the majority of the loss are from unrealised hedging losses, NOT actual cash losses. Finally, and probably the greatest issue, is that the vast majority of the loss recorded for the last financial year will be that of fuel hedging losses and cargo fines. Both of these are items are far removed from the control of the majority of CX staff bar the few who were responsible for the decisions that led to these losses in the first place.

Staff will find it hard to accept unpaid leave and bail out the company without serious answers and public accountability by management for their stuff ups.

Of course it is their train set and they will do as they please.

a le rhone

CX Cargo has a fleet of aircraft and carries cargo.

Fedex has a fleet of aircraft and a fleet of a million vans worldwide and carries small package freight, basically a mail delivery network.

Different beasts.

If you have a look at the online schedules for LAX, the 77W drops down to 3x a week to LAX only in April, compared to 5x a week now.

Lets try and keep all of this in perspective. Until either, a) senior managment take the first significant pay cut, both salary AND bonus, or b) aircraft orders are cancelled, I will not even listen to the talk of 'crisis' or any other inflamed rhetoric. CX has consistently used the ups and downs of the economy to extract maximum advantage against their own staff. When TT takes a meaningful and verifiable cut to his income, then perhaps he will have my attention. If they are not cancelling aircraft orders, particularly freighters, then what does that tell you...?:ugh:

ATY
100% agree

The DFO who cried wolf
 

But guys, in the DFO update last Friday he stated:

Apparently he's not fooling this time, there actually is a wolf. :{

Can someone confirm for me when those KA guys recently hired to CX freighters will be elegible to transfer to the PAX fleet - Surely they must be bottom of seniority to do so????

I imagine they will be in the same boat as DEFO on freighter - ie can transfer to pax fleet once all SO's senior to them have upgraded???
In case of captains - once all FO's senior to them have command??

thanks yoke...

Last on, first off. As per the contract. Can't say I'll miss the captains with 1700 numbers to go to be in the running for a pax command. And no, I won't be bullied into taking unpaid leave, I'm working my arse off. 70 hours a month instead off the steady 84 I've done since I got here would be a pleasant change. And it won't send them broke either.

Jack57

They're already on the pax fleet. COS 08 has a unified pay scale which means every F/O joining after 1 Jan 2008 flies both fleets.

Last In, First out yes, but read the COS99. That is off the "redundancy" list and not the seniority list. Which, I am guessing, means the company compiles a list based on where they do and do not need pilots, with the least needed at the bottom (ie. all freighter only FOs). So you could be here 3 years on the -400 and get the boot while a newbie on the 777 gets to keep his job in YYZ and continue to feed his family.

This is my interpretation, if anybody knows for sure, please correct me if I am wrong.

Mayday (a CoS99 freighter only FO hired in 2006)

Shipped Free
 

Why send freight by air when you can send it on a boat for free? Only if speed is absolutely essential.
Shipping rates hit zero as trade sinks - Telegraph

Mayday - redundancy is definitely not "needs-based", but simply done on DOJ. This is the whole principle of last in first out.

I understand that, but the wording in the COS has me concerned....considering also what has happened in the past.

Trust me...I hope you are correct.

Mayday.

The anomaly may be because the ASL joiners on 01/01/2000 had a clause saying that they would only be made redundant if we started parking freighters, a clause that seemed relevant during sars!
If you're concerned, write to one of our office wallahs asking for a copy of the redundancy list.

Just to throw a cat amongst the pidgeons...

What happens given that the extendees on the freighter are on contract. Does this mean that permanent employees can be made redundant and the contractors stay as there contract hasn't expired, not to mention the pay advantage the company has.

Do you guys actually think that Cathay would furlough in seniority? You actually think they would waste the millions that it would require to go through a seniority training shuffle, just to say they did it in seniority order? :ugh:

If you answered yes to the above, then let me ask you how much you want for a bag of the stuff so I can smoke it too.

First of all, depending on how deep it goes, a seniority furlough would mean that we would loose all our freighter Captains. Ex-ASL, Re-treads, Dragonair, Oasis. The whole lot. So now the company would have to retrain all the freighter captains from eligible crew. This would creat vacancies all over the system, in different types. Which creates training cycles for all those replacements.

Then, they would also furlough the DFOs on the passenger fleet. That means that they would have to train a boat load of 777 FOs, being that is the only growing fleet. I beleive the training task is already pretty high due to expansion, so increasing it is in the company's best interest.

I don't think it will come to furloughs, but if it does, you can be sure of one thing - It will be done based on where the cuts are needed, not in seniority. If Cathay finds itself with too many freighter crews, it will make redundant in the freighter only. They might allow base transfers, but don't expect the company to move you. It will be an "extreme circumstance" that will be funded out of your own pocket.

And it will start at the bases. Even though those crews are technically cheaper than HK crews, do you know how expensive it would be to furlough a HK pilot? A based pilot can be furloughed with a notice in the mail 3 months ahead of time. That is it. A HK pilot would also require repatriation and moving allowance back to home country, as well as sorting out any property requirements. Some rental clauses have penalties for early cancellation. Besides, you furlough a based guy, you can easily replace him with a HK based guy. If you furlough a HK based guy, you can't replace them with a based guy.

Don't get me wrong, I think that it is crap and that the company should do everything possible to honor seniority during a furlough. But I'm just being realistic. Reminds me of when the Classic started being removed from Europe and they were presented with the problem of having all those guys based there. The company found themselves with a rostering problem with getting these guys to fly the regional trips out of HK. Their reaction was to just say that "we know that this is against the COS, but these are extreme circumstances". :yuk:

I can guarantee you that the same would be done during any sort of furlough situation.

Whilst I agree with your sentiment Sqwak7700, may I point out the following, which might actually work in the favour of seniority.

- As you correctly point out, we would lose our freighter DECs (ASL 2009, Oasis, KA, etc), however, isn't it the freighter where we are hurting the most for excess crew? In fact, it has been suggested that the voluntary unpaid leave was actually aimed mostly at the freighter, and to a much smaller extent the 777. If you talk to the other fleets, especially the Airbus, most guys are working so hard, that they don't want their mates taking unpaid leave, because it will overload the rest of the guys.

- Furloughing DEFOs on the passenger fleet could well happen also, because as you say, it is easier to let go of a based guy rather than a HK pilot. Remember that all the DEFOs are based. On the issue of training, they've already committed to convert the Nth American crews to 777, so letting go of based DEFOs in seniority will not impact the operation. The same goes for Aust, where everyone on the passenger fleet is Airbus, so training issues don't come into it.

Europe might be a little bit messier, because there are different fleets to Europe, and a mix of freighter guys, and COS 08 unified scale (aka C-scale) to muddy the waters. however, it should not be insurmountable.

Let the courts decide...

What a disfunctional group of people - plotting the demise of your colleagues.

Disgusting really.

The Usual Worthless Drivel
 

I see that the uselessness and misinformation of these posts hasn't changed much.

If Cathay resorts to redundancies, which I highly doubt they will, it will be last in, first out. Period. In fact, I suggest that many of my colleagues are not interested in unpaid leave but will allow Cathay to pursue layoffs. We haven't had a payraise in years and much of that can be attributed to pilots continuing to come and do our jobs for less pay and benefits.

This idea of HK pilots being more difficult to get rid of is simply pie in the sky from some new joiner to HK. It is solely your problem if you are in deep hock for some depreciating flat in Tung Chung. All they are required to give you is 3 months salary in lieu. Quite frankly, the procedure to pursue an out of seniority redundancy on a base would be too costly for Cathay. The severance package would be huge, something that many of us would like to get. The Crofts case was an eyeopener for Cathay and believe me they don't want to go there again. There are just too many laws in the employees favour.

Don't plan your life based on some anonymous post like Pprune, ask someone outright for the proper answer. Unfortunately, many of our problems have stemmed from these anonymous posts.

I always said that if you cannot give your name it is worthless advice.

weastcoastcaptn...
 

whats your name then ?:ok:

I will never read westcoastcapt post ever again , FLYING WITH WESTCOASTERS is hard enough as it is , and I was lead to believe the pommy captns were bad.....:ok:

Sorry west, you guessed wrong on all. I think you misread my post. I was purely speculating on what I think CX will do, based on their behaviour when it comes to other, somtimes similar matters. You don't need to take it personal, I don't wish redundancy on anyone, especially any of my peers.

You shouldn't take posts on PPRUNE so personal, this is nothing but chit chat back and forth, that is all it is. I take everything I read in these forums with a grain of salt. I think we can all agree that no-one here wants anyone on the street, we are merely chatting on what we think will be the company's reaction in case redundancies are required.

Having said that, take a step back and look at the situation from a managers point of view, without any emotions and biases you might hold due to your position / rank. I don't wish that anyone gets furloughed, but, I think that if the situation came to it, Cathay would do what is good for Cathay, and that is usually the cheapest option.

Your reply was purely defensive, you really didn't offer a counter point to rebute my argument or prove me wrong, you just spewed your emotions and showed your fear - probably because you might actually think I'm right. :D

This "redundancy" topic just shows how screwed up the hiring has been. When SOs are senior to Capts, thanks to DEC hiring among other reasons, and when plenty of available and qualified FOs would be willing to take those left seat jobs, it makes for a sad story. I hope it doesn't come to layoffs, there's no reasons for it at the moment anyway, but if it does it has to be in reverse seniority. :uhoh:

What Nonsense
 

For Sqwak7700 may I suggest that you are the one taking it personally. I certainly don't get the least bit emotional about anonymous posts. I just deal with the facts. And no, I don't think that you are the least bit right, nor I am I the least bit fearful for my job.

Yes, CX will always pursue the cheapest option for the benefit of the company. One would expect that of management. However, they have to be mindful of the laws that exist in the various jurisdictions worldwide. I draw your attention to the recent steep fine for cargo price fixing in the US and the recent lawsuit in favour of the FAU. CX might like to believe they are above the law but they are not.

We have a seniority system whether you believe it or not. And our contracts are based on last in, first out.

Perhaps you are a relative new joiner. Is that the problem?

It's in the COS
 

Go and read sect 32 Redundancy

I'm agree with WESTCOASTCAPT's interpretation

If I get made redundant before guys junior to me you can guarantee that I like many others will take action.

Strangely (for CX) this section of the COS is actually fairly clear in the way that it is written. I'm sure that they'd find a way to try to interpret it differently (ie termination due to a reason other than redundancy). Having said that there are enough law firms around the world who I reckon would take this on a NO WIN No FEE basis. Now I know that I won't get much out of the lawyers from this one, but the company would have to pay, that alone would be worth it.

When you consider the amounts that have to be paid out (6 months salary and full retirement fund)Do you really think the company could be bothered with out of order seniority dismissals after paying out these sums of money and then have the threat of law suits as well.

Second view - think like an accountant briefly - why take such a high salaries charge to the books, ie this would be real cashflow outgoing, when you are managing to convince people to take unpaid leave.

Squawk 7700 says

You shouldn't take posts on PPRuNe so personal, this is nothing but chit chat back and forth, that is all it is. I take everything I read in these forums with a grain of salt.


Yet 7700 you constantly belittle and insult ppruners that disagree with you in ant way. Take a look at your last 20 posts and you have insulted 90% of the people who put to print their thoughts etc on pprune. Hopefully you have changed a little and will debate subjects in a civil way and hopefully with less smilies i.e. :ugh:

..would everybody PLEASE calm down! Regardless of WHAT you think CX management are capable of, you can be assurred that when it comes to redundancy, they will scrupulacy adhere to the seniority list. Some of you are nothing short of hysterical. More to the point, CX will not be laying of anyone in the foreseeable future. As I have said before, when they start cancelling aircraft orders..THEN you can start getting worried. Until then, don't let them wind you up. :ugh:

Hhhhhmmmm....
 

Cathay puts aircraft orders on hold
By Raphael Minder in Hong Kong and Robin Kwong in Taipei
Published: November 28 2008 17:42 | Last updated: November 28 2008 17:42
Cathay Pacific announced cost-cutting measures on Friday, including the deferral of aircraft deliveries, as the Hong Kong-based airline faced a sharp slowdown in both passenger and cargo traffic.

The airline cut its forecast for 2009 passenger capacity growth to less than 1 per cent, from 6-7 per cent. Tony Tyler, Cathay’s chief executive, also warned that the financial crisis was having “a particularly severe” effect on freight, which accounts for about 30 per cent of its revenues.

As a result, the airline will ground two of its Boeing 747 cargo aircraft in the Californian desert and put on hold the HK$4.8bn (US$620m) construction of a Hong Kong cargo terminal. It will also offer cabin and cockpit crew unpaid leave next year.

Cathay has ordered 42 passenger and freighter aircraft from Boeing, originally scheduled to be delivered by 2012. Mr Tyler said the airline was talking to Boeing about deferring the deliveries and outstanding payments.

This week, Air France-KLM also announced that it would postpone taking delivery of new aircraft, a trend that is threatening Boeing and rival Airbus.

Jim Proulx, at Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle, said several airline customers had moved their delivery dates but said the aircraft-maker was confident its $276bn-backlog of orders – the equivalent of seven years of sales – was a sufficient cushion to carry it through the downturn.

Mr Tyler indicated that more operational cuts might be required at Cathay given the difficult market conditions.

“We cannot see light at the end of the tunnel at this point,” he said.

The measures come less than a month after Cathay issued its second profit warning of the year, citing lower demand.

Cathay’s problems mirror those of airlines worldwide, but it is among the Asian carriers that are most vulnerable to falling business passenger traffic as a result of job cuts in the financial sector, as well as lower cargo traffic as Chinese manufacturing exports decline.

Earlier this month, David Turnbull, former chief executive of Cathay, told the Financial Times that cargo revenues for Asian airlines were likely to drop off after the Christmas shopping season and could fall as much as 20 per cent by the middle of next year.

The outlook for the Asian aviation sector has worsened rapidly, forcing rival airlines in India to discuss co-operation initiatives and two Chinese state-controlled airlines to seek emergency subsidies.

Separately, Malaysia Airlines reported on Friday that profit in the quarter ending September 30 fell 90 per cent to M$38.1m (US$10.5m), with flat revenues.

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines recently forecast that capacity growth for Asian airlines would be flat next year compared with growth of 4-5 per cent this year.

Additional reporting by Hal Weitzman

...I clearly said 'cancellation' of orders. A deferral is nothing more than a way to 'suggest' that there are problems without actually confirming that there are in fact serious problems. As I said, when CX actually cancels aircraft orders...then you can perhaps start to be concerned. Until then, don't waste a decent nights sleep worrying about it....:=

Curiously, I find myself agreeing with ATY. They're using the slow down to rationalise fleets, getting the right pilots on the right types and the newer aircraft replacing the old. They have the current extension policy to cut costs in the short term if they have to and they're not keen to lose their "never furloughed" reputation.
I can understand people being worried if they're near the bottom of the list but there are many measures they'd prefer to use before the redundancy list comes into play.....IMHO!

A Blast from the Past
 

David Turnbull is preaching doom & gloom. It must be true.

Give me a break. What's next?? "no money in freight."???