Want a temp base?
 

Anyone out there want to be based out of HKG? Say no to extended duties, say no to Closed Loop.

The GMA (who is joined at the hip with Hughes) closed the bases as they wanted the whole pilot group on POS18. They are hanging on to this even as the airline is canceling the few flights we were operating. We need based crew more than ever. The closing of the bases will cost us more than the last brain wave decision to hedge the fuel.

For decades we had temp and permanent bases. It isn't that hard, we have done it before, but they say it is complex and difficult as they try to bluff their way out of this. Time to call their bluff. If they want to crew the flights they can base us out. Force the issue. Withdraw all support for extended duties and closed loop.

Unfortunately money talks and the greed is overwhelming the selfish types that continue to volunteer.

Good luck earning all that potential $ when management wash their hands of you, your extra $ and the extra time off...GONE with one positive test

So you could do a pattern to LAX, test positive, end up in hospital, maybe in ICU, use up all of your medical insurance, still owe thousands. Have the days docked as sick days and have your salary cut.

Meanwhile DFO takes his xmas holidays (when he wanted them, not when they were allocated), returns to HKG and does his quarantine in a suite at The Peninsula, counting the days as office days. All paid for by the company.

For the first time in a while I have to say the guys wanting the LA temp basing are ones that are fed up with HK. They want a break from the Bs here and going to America gives them that. For most I know it’s not about the money at all.

The issue will be when one of the crew eventually tests positive for simply living a normal life in LA (nothing wrong with that, i advocate it), but every trip will be slightly more risky, not from a health perspective but having to deal with the HK covid positive process for potentially months. Doubt the company will help and you will use up all your sick leave. Not a matter of if but when a terps guy has to deal with all that all the while subjecting their crew to 21 days in PB.

Guarantee within the first week of TERPS someone will test positive to omicron on arrival in HKG, end up in North Lantau Correctional Hospital, with all his co-pilots in Penny's Bay Correctional Facility

Until TERPS is set up in a way where crew do not ever layover in HK (unlikely, with the often repeated comments by management reminding us that CX is ultimately a HKG based airline), it is doomed to fail

GMA has just announced some more details on Temp Bases (TERPS). As the witch is a typical CX mis-manager she can't bring herself to admit fault or error, so I strongly recommend that we call the scheme Temp Base in any correspondence with the company. Apparently she doesn't like the word 'base'.

TERPS will be classic CX... over promise and under deliver

Mainly, as btrdux points out it’s destined to fail if these crew have to layover in HKG. Omicron is rampant outside of HK (albeit largely harmless in healthy vaccinated people), and crews will contract it, triggering huge numbers of close contact PB incarcerations upon arriving and testing in HK.

To make it work requires “slipping” crew nearby, limiting time in HKG to transits only, and layovers in less monomaniacal locations like BKK, where crews are not tested systematically on arrival.

"does" or "doesn't" like the word 'base'?

This is the company which also delivered: Limited IFE movies as the passenger 'does not want to be overwhelmed with choice', fire proof shirts (never mind your balls) which looked like ****, S bend business class seat 'our research shows that passengers prefer them to lie flat seats', fuel hedging, base closure, cargo price fixing, illegal employment practices in NZ and France, the zodiac cabin in the 350, applying a pax surcharge on FOCs (saying they had no choice but to apply it to all tickets - CAD said that was BS), telling crew hotels to produce a special crew menu to reduce ollowances.......

So this is the company that just lies, no qualifiers, just lies.
You know, if they had just said on 01 April 1993 "from this day forward we are going to take whatever we can from you, whenever we can, and say whatever we like to get away with it" we'd all have been a lot less unhappy don't you think?
Of course, a lot less people would have taken the job.