People Thinking Of Going CX
 

Now before I talk about why not to join CX, let me tell you my situation. So I joined as a Second Officer 2.5 years ago on COS08. Now for many of you thinking of joining CX, that is no longer available, if you join CX you will be joining under COS18. - degraded contract.

After 2.5 years of being in the "legacy" airline I am yet to do my STI (second officer technical interview) so that means that I probably will only be upgrading to JFO (junior first officer) in about 1.5 or 2 years time. Meaning I will be in a position which gains me absolutely NO experience for over 4 years +. - Not good for career progression.

Now is CX a career airline? Honestly I would so NO. It use to be. Expats that gave up lifestyle/family life in their home country back in the day received a Housing Allowance. This was a "good" package as they will leave CX with a house or 2 paid off and can afford the lifestyle/family life in HK at the moment. Space is not as much of a issue as it is for us COS08 pilots trying to cram a family in a 2 bed apartment because - CX does not give us a housing allowance. They give us an HKPA (pilot allowance) which honestly does not cover 50% of your rental if you lucky.

Lets talk about joining CX on the new COS18 - firstly you will be working much much harder than your fellow SO's for less money. Be very careful when you get given a copy of the contract to read it and think about future earnings. As life is very very expensive in HK and if you thinking of having a wife and kid, you will be in trouble. Your kids schooling allowance might look like a lot but take it from me.....its not. you will have to pay in a lot, and I mean a lot of extra cash to get your kids into the same school as your fellow SO's that joined a few months before you.... not ideal. And thats just school fees.

Working harder to get your hours up for money? This is going to lead to fatigue issues and increase rate of sickness - which your sickness days per year are also less. ( or in a way you have to earn them) - Not ideal.

Now lets talk upgrade time for SO's. I can comfortably say that if you join after 1 December 2018 you will be a SO for 4 - 5 + years. And believe me after 1 year you will loose all interest in this job. Join as a DEFO is probably even worse off, because yes you get paid more cash but you are all the way at the bottom of the seniority list. So you have to wait for everyone to upgrade to CAPT before you. You will be very frustrated that you passed by pilots probably that have 1000's of hours less experience than you and know nothing about the aviation world - goodluck. I say come here get the rating and leave.

I think if you considering coming here speak to your friends that are here, ask them for honest advice and they will tell you what they think. Ask a few friends because not everyone is unhappy here but everyone's situation is different.

Now the flying is boring as I have told you because SO's do absolutely nothing and you get treated like that in a way. Making bunks and being awake through the night is not what I envisioned that my career would be. Do I want to leave CX? mmmmm yes I will it just is a matter of time. As I said SO's hours are useless but my home country does recognise them. Probably the only country that does. I will wait for CX to pay me my bonuses and then I am out of here. This ship has no rudder and the Captain of the ship is not very liked I take it - read other posts.

The relationship between the UNION and Company is ZERO and it seems nothing is being said or done to rectify this..... Its a toxic environment that cannot be sustained. The AOA are not taking any kind of stand to better ALL pilots situation in this company. The Chairman needs to grow a pair or step down.....

We have been in Contract Compliance since I have joined here and has done nothing but disrupt my life and families and for what? Training Ban is hurting the company, but its hurting us as well - Upgrades too, and don't forget SO's upgrading means extra money. FO's that are waiting to upgrade to CAPT's are all on housing - so no PROBLEM.

Take my message the way you want. Not meaning to offend you when I say I would reconsider my options.

I WISH I read PPRUNE and listened to the advice given here............

As honest and as clear a warning against joining CX that you are likely to read, especially the last line. Thank you for taking the time to warn others. Wish you the very best in the future.

In the last quarter 2 SOs upgraded to FO ........ so how long is it that you expect to be an SO again?

MC, you sir are a cretin. You don't even have the respect to appreciate the heartfelt comments he has offered. What a soulless individual you must be.

That's right MorningCoffee, wind up all the SO's in the company, many of which are already barely sitting on the edge of the fence when it comes to leaving CX. Your management brilliance is shining bright for all to see. As TeaTime said, you and your management cohorts are nothing but "toxic", in every way. Keep believing you are in control, right up to the point when your cubicle comes crashing down around you. Pathetic.

That's right MorningCoffee, wind up all the SO's in the company, many of whom are already barely sitting on the edge of the fence when it comes to leaving CX. Your management brilliance is shining bright for all to see. As TeaTime said, you and your management cohorts are nothing but "toxic", in every way. Keep believing you are in control, right up to the point when your cubicle comes crashing down around you. Pathetic.

As long as its only the cubicle that comes crashing down,,, when I read the title of this thread I thought it was about Pax flying on CX-I have a trip to HK planned for feb 19 and reading this and looking back on the other threads makes me think I should avoid CX and stick with boring BA-is it really that bad?

I still prefer to take CX from YYZ to HKG because AC is just sh!t. CX cabin crew service is still good, food could be better but their PE is top notch in my opinion. Just a shame that they don't know how to treat the employees that count the most with respect.

Thank you lesson for what I believe to be a completely accurate and informative post.

There are many options toward using your talent and experience and wasting life's most precious resource (time) --especially considering where we've gone in a few short years--isn't worth it. I'd suggest folks go somewhere and be happy. It takes so long to build something good and is so easy to tear it down very quickly; I personally don't see any way to recover what has become of us (especially given how our 'solution' has been to propagate POS 18 -- should speak volumes). Just mitigate the bleeding and pain. I kinda look at it as a form of hospice for a company once great.

One thing I might disagree with though is I hope that your fellow crew members do treat you with dignity and respect. All the crew members are important, and any one of the operators might have to handle a difficult situation in a contingency. It's a team. That has generally been the case as I've seen it and I hope folks are still doing this. It's also been my experience that junior crew members often pick up on things missed -- especially when things get rushed. This is a very important role.

All the best and I'm sure you will enjoy your new career. I wouldn't wait too long; you never get the time back.

Another great post. Also ending with a poignant line: "you never get the time back". That is so true, and it's not worth wasting any of your life dealing with this horrible management. They ARE toxic, and will simply strip away any love for flying you may have. HK has turned into a complete disappointment for most, and that explains why people can't wait to find themselves working somewhere else.

Is that so?! That sounds kind of backwards, but then again, I guess seniority is the rule of the land and so I suppose it's fair. On the bright side, I'm sure it would be a little easier to be stuck on FO wages for 10 years, than on SO pay which has become a bit of a joke with only 70% guaranteed.

This whole thread and the others are so discouraging to read. I long considered moving to Hong Kong and working at Cathay to be my ultimate career goal. I was thinking of heading over to Sunwing to get some time on a jet and for those lucrative summer European bases, and then apply to Cathay as a DFO (I don't think I could handle multiple years of sitting in the jumpseat). But holy reading this forum has made me reconsider my 'plan.' It's really frustrating to watch my dream being torn apart.

Honestly, it's frustrating just being a Canadian in general right now. They say there's a pilot shortage here, but all the majors here pay poverty wages for the first couple of years, have ****ty fatigue rules, etc etc.. and I wouldn't feel that proud working for any of them. Going overseas seemed like a much better alternative, especially Cathay and to a lesser extent, Emirates. But I guess that's not the case anymore. It appears that the only place one can go and make some decent money with decent working conditions is mainland china, which I'm not sure if I could handle for long. I thought about doing the Qantaslink thing on the Dash 8, but I get the impression that foreign pilots are really not appreciated there, and I can sort of see why. Have some family and friends there so that's too bad. Guess I'm going to just have to suck it up and live in the parents basement for the next little while.. :ugh:

I think it's very nice of MC to make sure everyone understands management's position:
"You come to CX, be warned we have rigged the system so that the first 5+ years of your career will be of little or no future value to you anywhere else. By the time you have accumulated any experience of worth, 10+ years will have gone by. Then see how you feel about restarting that 10+ years behind your contemporaries who went to another carrier.
DO NOT TRY AND TELL US WE DID NOT WARN YOU!"

I can completely understand your frustration, but like a lot of things in like, looking at something with "rose coloured glasses" usually means disappointment. Once upon a time, your idea about CX would have been valid. Now however, it is the graveyard of pilot careers. Combine a substandard salary (relative to cost of living in HK, which is horrendous), inadequate housing options, inadequate medical, inadequate work rules, inadequate fatigue concern, inadequate management, and you have a toxic environment that will sap the life from you.

The bottom line is this old aviation adage: "better to be on the ground wishing you were up there, than be up there wishing you were on the ground". Translate into what most of the CX pilots feel, the majority of whom are actively making plans to leave. Good luck, but don't head down the cul de sac of wasting any of your life at CX.

What's sad is that even with this new COS18, I'd be better off, at least financially at Cathay compared to AC, Westjet, Transat, etc. Everything is rock bottom here. It's extremely frustrating since our neighbours to the south are making six figures within two years of being an FO!! I wish we could get green cards as pilots :(

I realize that if I don't apply to Cathay, Emirates, etc. I'm contributing to possibly increasing wages for you guys, but the same goes for here at home. If all the Canadian pilots bugger off to other countries, maybe wages might go up here in this freezing country. I'm quite conflicted!

Guess it all comes down to the lifestyle at the end of the day. Just wish I knew who could offer that in today's job market. Working 14 hour days for 56k a year in the most expensive cities in Canada and giving half of it to Mr. Trudeau sounds terrible, but so does making decent money but having to deal with awful/incompetent managers and breathing in polluted air while living in a shoe-box until an upgrade to Captain a decade later..

FOR THOSE CONSIDERING JOINING AS A SO AT CX:

Posted by NC back in Mar 18. Still pretty accurate today:

I have started this thread simply to give what is likely to be a more accurate guide to upgrading to First Officer and then Captain at CX.

The first thing to watch out for – being told what the “current” time to upgrade/command is. That only applies to those that joined 4 or 11 years ago. Currently, those being upgraded to First Officer joined 3- 4 years ago. Those on Command course joined around 11 years ago.

We have recruited just under 2,000 pilots in the last 11 years and we have only exceeded 100 command courses/year on one occasion so far. We have recruited 700 in the last three years.


We have over 500 Second Officers now and by years end we expect to have almost 800 with only 10 SOs to be upgraded to FO this year. (Due to new Rostering policies they now need a lot more SOs and a lot fewer FOs)

I’ve used actual figures from 2011-2017 inclusive and used CX projections for 2018.


Based on that, a new joiner with DOJ 31/12/18 would upgrade to FO 6.6 years and to Captain in around 30.3 years. Now that is using an average rate for a, presumably, growing airline. I say presumably as we have actually remained the same size for the last three years.

If I ‘assume’ we will grow again at the same rate we did for the previous two decades then time to FO reduces to just over five years and time to command reduces to 17 years. My assumption of growth rate is OPTIMISTIC given the management plan for 2018-20 and the current industrial impasse in regards to the training ban. In other words – it will probably be longer than 5/17 years.



So you may be told upgrade to FO is 3 years and command time is 10.5 years – which it WAS for those that joined in 2007 and 2014. If you are planning on a career here – plan on 5-6 years as an SO. Plan on 17+ years till command(regardless of whether you join as an FO or SO)

(By the way – top increment on SO scale is reached after three years service. For a FirstOfficer it is after about 13 years. )

Fair enough Clear Sky!

Porterboy, the question to ask yourself is: where would you go next? Because you ain't gonna spend your career in CX, I can guarantee that.
Think POS18 is bad? Wait for the next one.
My advice is, try to go to your career airline earlier than later. If you need to come to CX for the rating, do it. But is a 747 rating useful nowadays?

As for lessonlearnt, yes, the training ban is slowing down our careers progression. But the decision to go with 2 SOs on long haul flights is having a much bigger impact on an SO career progression.

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Great question... I have no idea. The options out there aren't great. I can hardly pay my student loans where I'm at. Should've chosen another career or gone to the military in hindsight... That Michael Moore movie about being a pilot in the states applies just as much, if not more to Canada than the US right now.
Out of pure curiosity, is the 747 historically the only aircraft to be offered for DFO or do they ever offer other fleet types? If not, are you ever able to transfer or are you frozen on type for good?

20 year captains can't get off the 747 so you never would.

Morningcoffee

Thanks for the read and reply. I see lots of people here think you're management. I am new here so I will hold my judgement, BUT

Thanks for bringing that up to my attention. Yes I have a P2X rating but believe it or not, I have some experience before joining CX. So yes companies in my home country will look at me and they are. I have decided to take CX for everything I possibly can. List below....

1. My TT bonuses (every year we get a experience bonus which is just shy of 900 000hkd over 6 years - so I have 4.5 years left) and please note to all new joiners this is a thing of the past, so already you are loosing out coming here if you have experience.

2. I have and will take my maximum sick leave - it makes life so easy to extend my leave or days off - and I'm entitled to them. I hear the SO sick rate is climbing....Do you blame us? NEW JOINERS you will have to earn your sick leave and this is gong to suck when you trying to get fly more hours to pay your tax/rent etc and you sick.....

3. After getting a nice big shiny jet rating I am GONE!!!! Now its taken a little longer than I expected. But I feel sorry for people joining now as a SO......;4-5 years + for a upgrade. It sucks trust me.

If you are management you should clearly see there is a issue in this airline thats costing them massively.

Maybe wake up and smell the morning coffee.

Porterboy

I am honestly not telling you not to come here. Im telling you things from my perspective. You can take advice or not. I did not when I joined this airline and it has backfired.

As I said people are happy here, you find less and less but there are some around town. The majority are not and are looking for a CXit. But I believe you should do what you want. I can comfortably say I would not recommend anyone to join this airline because that recommendation would be a terrible one for someone looking to build his/her career and enjoy the flying.

Come as a DEFO. You will have to wait for currently 600ish SO's to upgrade to CAPT before you get a sniff. And everyone of them will be your senior when you try staff travel, of bid for bases one day (trust me there will be no more bases) or even just requesting a flight. When the SO upgrades eventually he is your senior and he has the request bid higher than yours. But you get paid more - well not actually if you look at the COS18 you will be on.

But its your choice and everyones choice out there to do what you want to do. But be warned......

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For Porterboy, I completely understand where you are coming from. I'm not sure if you have lots of experience or not. If not, then CX is an option just keep in mind that it is not a career airline especially on the COS18 package. While it does demean the rest, if it is your only option, we really are in no place to judge. Build the hours and get out. It's becoming the RyanAir of Asia. However, if you do have experience, I urge you to look around. There are many contracts in Asia at the moment that are better than COS18, such as Air Japan, even HKA commuting contract, some chinese carriers, corporate a new venture opening from Japan Airlines, etc... Even the middle east, while not much better, will give you the pay and experience to get directly into Air Canada. There are many options. I just don't see people with some experience being so desperate that career COS18 is their only choice.

MoringCoffee, I'm not here to berate you or crap all over SO's coming to join. The options you requested are as stated above. Again, for a hong kong local with no experience, I agree the cadet program is probably one of the best choices, besides funding it yourself. (Keep in mind Half of the FTA training costs, is almost the cost for a commercial multi in the USA/Canada. They would be better off funding outside of cathay and joining on an AE course with no training costs being deducted and better MPF) However, I would hope that these cadets keep in mind after training, they owe nothing to cathay, they can be expats anywhere else, and they will have options when they get their P1.

I think the point of my post is to echo what the others are saying. This is not a career airline! While I can't completely judge those without any experience joining, those who do have it and saying their are no choices in their countries, need to keep looking around. Sadly, and at the risk of turning away people with good experience, this job is not for you.

To recap:

You have NO ONE saying it's great--not even that it's good or even OK or mediocre. You have NO ONE saying things are trending up or likely to get better (or even break even); most say things are going rapidly in the other direction. I don't think I've seen really ANYONE say how happy they are. The best (potentially management) trolls can say is "well, it may not be as bad as blah blah blah." Think about that--the best anyone can say is 'well, it may not be as bad as.......' This of a once crown jewel airline where people were fighting to get in the door.

Have you heard ANYONE say anything positive about career aspects here ? There are certainly SOME good things--but how many of these had anything to do with the job or job satisfaction (or even potential career progression) ?

Seniority is everything in any airline career. So ANY time you spend parked somewhere is lost money and lost lifestyle if you go anywhere else. In POS 18, you're looking at a contract that IMHO is substantially worse than most US major low cost carriers (and that's living in Hong Kong with no labor laws to speak of and phenomenal costs).

Pretty much EVERYONE who has left (and cares to drop by and say something) has said how happy they are and how good their life is going (and back on track)--and what a good decision they made TO leave. Even if they've gone to a non-flying job. They didn't have to do this; I think a great deal of it is out of legitimate concern for others. It's a great catharsis to make a mistake (or not necessarily a mistake at the time but circumstances changed and turned out badly toward the end) and relay your experience to others--as pilots we do this extensively by passing on info to our fellow pilots. Have you read anything from anyone who's left which says they might have made a mistake by leaving ? For those staying have you heard anything other than "well, I'm older and kinda stuck ?" If you were driving a car (at least with some experience behind you and really wanting to get somewhere vice playing bulletproof redneck) would you try to blast through a field of quicksand, or would you look for a somewhat longer route around where you wouldn't get stuck and lose your car (and potentially you) ?

A person can talk himself or herself into some pretty crazy things. I might suggest speaking with others whose opinion you value. Often I've gotten a good 'sanity check' by bouncing ideas off others -- it's OK to abandon a bad idea.

If you do decide to take the plunge anyway, and wind up wondering where you went wrong, well it was right here. You were more than warned about what you were getting into.

Life's short and no one knows how many todays one gets. I wouldn't waste them.

https://www.pprune.org/south-asia-far-east-wannabes/469949-cx-so-all-you-need-know.html

As written by a bunch of SO's seven years ago. Not much has changed it seems.

Regarding the comment someone else made about the PE (passenger experience) let us all know how your experience is when one of us goes sick or fatigued, or just doesn't care enough to answer his/her phone when a pilot is needed last minute and your flight is delayed by hours, a day or just canceled outright. Tell us all how it goes stranded unexpectedly and perhaps missing the biz meeting or wedding you were planning on attending. Not that the crap degrades pax inflight service is anything to be impressed about anymore but let's see if you'll find comfort in it after I don't give a **** to show up for work on that day or refuse to help and save the delay or cancelation.

Make no mistake, for every little bit less I get, a little bit less you get. The cabin service you get is only one part of what you get for what you pay. If I'm not happy, you the passenger won't be happy. Even if I'm not going out of my way to make it happen. I have to give less if I'm given less and that I very very intentionally I make sure of. If I don't give less, then I'm just a chump. The end result flows downhill into your lap dear passenger. Enjoy your "experience". No hard feelings.

Nail in the coffin
 

Saw this posted in the KA thread in the wannabees forum. This is awful. wow. Especially considering how long a new comer will be stuck on the SO/FO wages. I thought it was a general rule to spend no more than 30% of your salary on rent/mortgage, but with this pay that rule gets you nothing remotely nice. Try 50% or more to live decently... Only way this would be worth it is DEC :bored: Had to see it to really believe it.

No kidding! I'll have to polish up that resume.

DEFO roster bids
 

Something to consider for anyone thinking of joining as a Direct Entry First Officer. You will be the most junior FO for roster bids until all 600+ Second Officers that joined ahead of you have been upgraded to First Officer. Then you will finally move off the bottom of the bidding barrel.

So for the first 5-7 years you will have zero chance of bidding any good trips - or getting commuter friendly rosters due to your lack of seniority. You will get the dregs - the India patterns etc. Lots of 2 pilot night flying.

Caveat Emptor