Really Top Guys Leaving
 

In the past ( 20 years ago) the holes left by REALLY good guys leaving were filled by up and coming REALLY good guys.
Now?
Not sure.

Really?
What’s your point, please spit it out.
Aircraft accidents are at an all time low. Training has adapted to the management roll a pilot performs, rather than the manual skills of yesteryear.

The crm free world of the 70s and 80s is long past, where the authoritarian captain was boss . Period.

Think KLM Tenerife .

Krone
 

Krone is one of the third floor Talking Heads puking out the daily talking points.. This will not end well - history proves.

There are indeed top guys leaving at the moment. People in their 40s.

AND Girls.

It's a simple calculation. When I joined, CX attracted and hired thousands of hours a year of experience. Now, they are losing thousands of hours a year in experience. You cannot have the same outcome with those two completely divergent facts. Time will prove this era as the cause of tragedy. Watch and wait.

Plenty of airlines around the world use cadet recruitment programs. Easyjet etc.
Nil accidents. You are not the sky gods you think you are.

And before you say your flying is more difficult... it ain't.

You must be management

Typical response yet with no substance.

Enoughisenough....

Not in the USA. As a result of a rash of accidents the FAA banned cadet programs, and other bottom-of-the-barrel hiring policies, that put a 150 hour pilot directly into the right seat of a commercial jet. The practice of hiring low hour commercial pilots as co-pilots in a commercial airline has been outlawed. Some cadet programs exist, but a minimum hour requirement is mandated before a cadet hire can qualify as a co-pilot in commercial jet operations....and it’s not 150 hours.

Altough previously first officers were required to have only a commercial pilot certificate, which required 150 hours, the new FAA rule requires first officers to hold an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate, requiring 1,500 hours total time as a pilot.

More recently, as regional airlines struggled to recruit experienced co-pilots, the FAA eased up a bit by allowing military pilots with a minimum of 500 hours of flying experience to become commercial co-pilots...but a minimum of 1,500 hours is required for non-military pilots.

All this is easily googled...so take a break from your other less pressing office duties and search for yourself.

After all, common sense should tell you that experience is a key metric when determining competence in any profession...especially for one where safety is the highest priority.

Is that substantive enough for you?

Cathay Pacific. Same as any other job really. The Halcyon days are long gone. Genuinely shameful

Raven11

I think you mean 250 hours for a CPL for fixed wing, 150 for rotorcraft

raven11

Not really - is there any evidence that the 1500 limit has increased safety in the US vs countries that don’t have it?

It was common sense that bad air caused malaria.

Freehills

“Common sense that bad air caused malaria.”?

No, that’s not common sense...that’s stupidly.

You then try to make a snarky point by asking for any evidence that the 1500 limit has increased safety? I can’t provide that evidence.
However, I’ll side with common sense and the FAA; unless of course you can provide any evidence that it hasn’t improved safety. Can you?

In the mean time, ask yourself why it costs more to recruit and hire experienced pilots...and why you and every other pilot track their flying hours in a personal logbook?

Raven, trying to argue with the irrational is....well, irrational. :ugh: (oh, and enoughisenough is a CX cubicle dweller, where the facts and common sense are subsumed by the overwhelming desire to improve ones bonus. Again, not worth even responding to. They are toxic, every single one of the 'swine').

My point is 1500 is completely arbitrary. The standard number of hours of practice that is needed to become an expert (eg a soloist musician) is generally held to be 10,000

That would make much more sense at least there is some science behind it

raven11

The 1500hr rule is an arbitary number which was made up with no proof that it improves flight safety. In the Colgan Air accident which led to the implementation of the rule, the F/O had over 2,200 hours on the Dash already. And report states it was the captains failure to recover from the stall correctly. Neither were low hour cadet pilots and flight hours was not cited in the report as a contributing factor.

So no it is not substantive enough for me.

The most important aspect in flight safety is training. EASA realise this.

Hard to receive quality training when the trainers also have no practical experience. I’m not sure if you are an experienced aviator or not, but if you are and you aren’t operating at a much higher level than you were when you first started, you are doing it wrong.

The reality is that the whole house of cards is built upon the fact that Boeing and Airbus have made it very very difficult to get yourself into serious trouble. When the technology backfires (Air France, Air Asia) it tends to go wrong. The only hope in those rare cases is that somebody has the smarts and experience to realize what’s going on. When they do you don’t hear about it because it’s an ASR, an item added to an RT or maybe an NTC.

Regulators, airlines and insurance companies are all comfortable with the risk. If they didn’t absolutely need 0 hour cadets in the seats they wouldn’t be there. It would be like it used to be and everyone would have experience. Cadets aren’t a superior way of crewing aircraft, they are cheap, necessary and an acceptable risk.

I forecast that the effect of hiring low/no hour pilots will not present until these initial pilots are now Captains and C+Trainers in the majority. This is still at least 10 years off for CX, but it is on the way.

It is then ,when an abnormal situation arises (eg. stall recovery, spiral dive recovery, major systems losses, not previously seen in canned training events, etc..), there will be some low quality responses and the precursors to disaster exist.

A high hours captain has a high hour experience of “normal ops” but very low exposure to “non-normal” situations if they haven’t previously been a pilot prior to starting as a cadet/SO. Ex-GA, commuter, small airline and military pilots have had significant exposure to events that are not canned and are not covered in the continuation training syllabus.

I predict that many other large airlines may reach this situation prior to CX. Let’s hope that the powers that be recognise and react to the threat in a timely manner. $afety is a priority just not necessarily No.1 priority at the moment.

Enoughisenough,

In your 3 month pprune career you have posted in one forum. You are the one without substance.

Btw, the 1500 hour rule is to stop regionals hiring 250 hour guys who work for food stamp wages. It was mostly to improve wages and conditions. Has anyone noticed US regionals actually pay a living wage now? Most will even pay for your hotel if you commute in now. No more sleeping in crew rooms!

AF 447 happened 8 1/2 years ago, so it isn’t something that will occur in the future

(In response to F Biplane)

250hrs?.Well some LCC in Asia have a 80hrs MPL program.

Care to name them?

Point taken Freehills. Quite correct, AF was two low experience pilots and a resting Captain. CX is perhaps already there in the cruise phase. I was more thinking of the take off and landing phases which were traditionally the higher risk phases of flight.
Paradigm shift perhaps?

For ZFT:
Please correct me if I am wrong but no need to look very far, in fact just across the road - KA is such an airline.

Fast Track
 

KA now has fast track ex cadet 320/1 Captains who have just over 3500hrs total and are still in their 20s.
CX has RQ FOs who have a little over 1500hrs and will be flying with very low hour SOs.

If anyone thinks an AF447 accident can't happen at CX, they haven't really paid attention to the inexorable overall decline in the experience levels. Thirty years ago, you needed either significant military jet experience, or 4-5 thousand hours with jet time mandatory to get hired at CX. Now, we daily have flights with inexperienced FO's, and a newbie SO who quite often doesn't know his emergency memory items. I'm sure the paying public would love to know that when they are resting during the night over the North Pacific or the Himalayas, the experience level up front is frequently 20% of what it was those 30 years ago. Further, when the relief FO goes to the toilet, you can have a brand new SO, perhaps 21 yrs old, sitting there with a high likelihood of failing to know what to do if certain emergencies occur. This is not speculation. It is fact based on documented experience. CX management have allowed the safety of this airline to diminish. Fact. And it is still declining.

I heard from one of them that KA gets some.. MPL can be had with approx 100 hrs (solo time not necessarily required) - straight into a shiny possibly wide body..
You feeling comfy yet ?

Big deal. Flying colours charter was 2500 jet to 757 command.

Its not the hours specifically but the exposure. Ex Military have in general, low hours vs years of service. But not many bunks on an F18.

Not many bunks inKA. Its hard graft, 35 sector months. So why should a 3500 hour guy not have a command?

Its not like they need global experience. KA is a niche. Once mastered , is fairly routing. And that again is a threat .

From the fleet office. There has been a pilot leaving Cathay every day for the last two months and the spike has the management concerned. Especially as Qantas and Virgin recruiters arrive in HK next month

Hehe no surprise there....if u read the missive that managment put out stating our attrition rate was with some arbitary normal levels last year ....they stopped their numbers up till october or september if i remember....and since october everyone knows it aint be pretty.....

Once writing on the wall that this aint an airline to stay at....it takes a while for resignations to gather steam....this aint an interview and resign next week type of career....it takes planning, effort on all parties for the next recruitment. Once this snowball starts rolling if have a spike now......you just starting to peek over the hill when it just rushes out of control. Good job cx management.

mngmt mole

Who can forget about the SO TCAS event? Just sat there didnt they?...not that its the SO fault....you just got that sort of exp with little idea that flying is inherently godamn dangerous...fat dumb happy flying shiny jet with piss poor managment gutted training.

A friend on the Boeing recently had his fleet forum, and they have a new format where one of the senior grown ups (GMF/DFO/COO) comes to chat to the boys & girls. Lots of nice words about wanting to make CX a place that people choose to come to work, beneficial rostering practices, etc etc etc.

His words were "it smacked of desperation"

The truth of the new fleet forum format is one of deception. The managers know they are feeding those involved a pile of bull :mad:. I almost (almost) feel sorry for them, as they know that every one of us listening realises how pathetic and pointless it all is. I sat through this a couple of weeks ago. It would be funny if it wasn't so desperate and futile. It's too late. Most of the junior pilots I am flying with are actively looking for their next job. Most have either already applied, interviewed or are awaiting course dates. My FO earlier this week told me he was leaving, that his wife was already back home and that he was done with CX. The salient comment from him was this; he said nothing they told him now would make any difference. He would never trust them to be honourable, and just assumed every claim or promise was a lie. He's seen enough, and it had convinced him that CX was not worth the investment of his career, or his family's future. That was a quote. CX management have accomplished the destruction of not only an airline, but a culture. That is unforgivable.

I was literally arguing with one of our “managers” as he was feeding their latest batch of lies to the rank and file at fleet forum. Those guys working on the third floor are shameless promoters of CX deceit and the destruction of a once great airline from the inside out. They all go into it to “make things better” and end up becoming part of the problem. They know it, and we know it. That’s why NOBODY decent is putting their hands up for these jobs anymore, just FOs and pathetic self servers. I’d quit before I’d take one of those jobs.

The reality is that not a single pilot in this airline has any illusions as to the lies they are being fed. Our managers have no credibility. They are representing a despotic and failed regime, and the pilots they purport to manage have already concluded that their best interests for a career lie elsewhere. Nothing will change the course of that outcome. It's already too late. It's probably also already too late for any of our managers to preserve their dignity.

Its a sad state when none of the managers have the self-integrity and pride to resign rather than blatantly lie to their pilots.:confused:

Resign? None of them have that much integrity. How about they just at least stop lying to the pilots? Let AT come in and do it herself.

Fleet forum has always been a waste of time and a joke not worth laughing at. Third floor managers have always been clueless (except for a couple) as a result of never having worked for a real airline before this place. All RAF, RAAF, CAF, or any other airforce or some small shop airline nobody ever heard of. None of them know what a real airline runs like at the FOP level. None of them can be trusted. Director of flight ops isn't even a pilot let alone an ex-cx pilot so where do you even begin about the lack of knowledge and qualification for the job of leading troops whose jobs you never have performed and aren't capable of doing. (The incompetent NR not to be left out, I'm not just picking on the current DFO.) They all lie to your face. They always have. The core culture of this place is the culture of lie. I realized this over a decade ago and decided not to give a sh!t and keep my sanity. Why? My compensation package.

I put up with the fact that my seniority means nothing to them. (I was lied to about this issue at my interview). Direct entry captains hired into the left seat after my date of hire. It's always nice to fly with a junior captain, not. Inability to bid and hold my preferred fleet according to my seniority. No absolute respect for seniority = No good will on my part on any issue.

I accepted the fact that I will not receive training at this place and will have to survive on my knowledge and skills I already had which I had to keep sharp despite what cx called training and standardization (these things don't exist here). This meant I would not enjoy doing my job like as I once had before.

Or that my contract was not to be respected or worth the paper it's printed on except to point at when it suits cx.

Inability to request and receive my preferred roster according to my seniority and without incompetent human molestation due to cx insisting to do this process like it's still the 50's despite the fact that other airlines having been using such computerized systems providing this valuable lifestyle flexibility to their crews while at the same time have been saving a lot of money on manning levels... for the last 20 years!

I decided over a decade ago I’d stay because of my compensation package. I’m after all a mercenary. Like many others, here for the compensation. Hoping I could do better for myself and my loved ones, than I could back home. Apart from the regular sight of cx aircraft at my home airport with the old paint scheme, I hardly knew anything about cx. Like many others I grew up with a hunger about all things aviation and aerospace. Any airline peaked my interest and still does. I liked the shiny story of cx and decided that and the shiny package they offered at the time was worth coming here.

Any real pride, respect, loyalty to cx I brought with me was quickly chipped away. What was left of my expectations was the compensation package. But when it was announced that was to be reduced, then there’s nothing left of value to me at this place. There’s no price you can put on pride, loyalty, trust which result in good will. I can’t remember when was the last time I cared at all about fuel savings or other cost cutting measures. I simply don’t care. I haven’t given a sh!t all these years because my seniority has not been respected as mentioned above. All the money saved by pissing all over my seniority and many many others like me will never amount to what it has cost in lack of good will and it will continue to do so. Tell me to leave if I don’t like it. Fine. But that will not fix the problem of lack of good will. The one replacing me will quickly be just like me. It’s the best definition of stupidity to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

Cx either has to pay more than others or be a more fulfilling enjoyable place to work at. Well, this is a sh!tty place to work at, it hasn’t kept up with pay and benefits of other airlines hiring and on top of that they want to take away from already lacking pay and benefits. They think people are working here because of any other reason than money. It’s sad and laughable at the same time. The only ones acting happy and fulfilled are the ones who come from places with little to no prospect of a better job so they fool themselves in believing they’re happy. What they really are is desperate and even they don’t have loyalty, good will and pride in cx. They just don’t have any other choice at the moment.

Time to what? Win? Nope. It’s time to leave. If you stay here, you lose.

If anybody decent did put up their hand, they’d be shot down in a flash anyway.