The Elephant In The Room
 

Lets talk about the Elephant in the room with regards to the Pilots at The CPG and STRESS.

How stressed are the pilots? Will one of their planes come to the same demise of MU 5735?

We at the Flight Operations Management Department believe it is highly unlikely, not impossible but highly unlikely. We have a Risk Management Team in place to assess the situation.

The Flight Operations Management has not put much stress on the pilots.

Some facts on No Stress caused by The CPG:

• It is not like we cut their salary by 40-50% with some pilots having to spend their saving to keep the family housed, fed and schooled.

• We have not cut their housing enough that a family of four have to live in a small 1-2 bedroom mini flat because they cannot afford housing or a family of 3 having to live in a one bedroom flat.

• The so called housing and schooling allowance is taxed by the Government at a rate of 15% plus 75% of the 15% for provisional tax for the following year.

• We have not cut their medical so much that they have to buy their own medical insurance even when on duty. The CPG pilots had a fundraiser to help a pilot whom had cancer, exhausted The CPG medical plan, was not covered under secondary insurance not to mention to remortgage his house to pay for medical treatment. Family care is at a minimum, expect to pay the above if something happens to your spouse or children. That is just a fact of life and we at The CPG really don’t care about you or your families well being. We cover enough and believe it is satisfactory.

Stresses from our Aircrew Management Staff:

• We don’t loot hours away from pilots that are over the minimum hours threshold to give those hours to people under the threshold so everyone gets minimum pay. We don’t guarantee block hours rostered so it is OUR prerogative to take away the extra money you may have been earning.

• We have an hourly pay system but no credits for hourly pay even in quarantine. We believe while in Quarantine for the last 2 years a 30 minute equivalent of hourly pay (only available for the last 7 months) is enough for our crew, that type of Quarantine Pay will be removed next month so no allowance while in a 3 day quarantine hotel which will limit the amount of days you are able to work. No Quarantine compensation.

Minimum hours on the B747/A320 are 35, 777 is 49 and Airbus 330/350 is 47. The hourly rate for the lowest aircraft is lets say a factor of 1 for the 777, the hourly rate for the A320/B747 are 1.4 more than the 777 and the A330/A350 are 1.05 more than the 777. You get paid your hourly rate over the minimum threshold. This is for year 1 Captains

The 20 year Captains only go up to Year 4 Captain, which is the highest, First/Second Officer year 2 is the highest. We have how the lowest paid wide body crew in the world. A year 1 Captain on the B777 makes $110,000 USD per year, F/O $73,000, S/O $48,000, the majority have not made over base pay in over 2.5 years.

Captains doing Check and Training upgrades have to do their training for free, no credit for flying or ground/Simulator duties.

No stress but we will not have a problem recruiting pilots, even Direct Entry Captains will be jumping at this pay. A First officer in any first world country flying a A320 will make as much or more as a 777 Captain at The CPG.

• The Flight Crew Management Team are very resourceful people, on their weekly Zoom meeting they have all the answers to your questions. All the answers can be summarized is a couple of statements i.e. 1. We will have to get back to you on that. 2. We don’t know. 3. It is very complicated. 4. Repeat answers 1 through 3.

• We don’t believe that 12-13 hour day returns followed by a 3 hour wait for a PCR test is too excessive followed by 3 days of quarantine.

• We don’t believe at alternating late nights returns followed by early morning day returns cause cumulative fatigue amongst our Flight Crew when they have to wait for a 3 hour PCR test at the airport each time.

• There is no stress caused by the Flight Crew Management Team when it comes to requesting Unpaid Leave to see Family Overseas. UNPAID Leave is very costly to The CPG even though we are only operating at 2% capacity. We have VERY Knowledgeable and Capable people running the Flight Crew Management Team

• Rosters don’t come out until the 25th of each month even though only 2% of the operations is being flown and when asked why………………..It is Very Complicated.

• Some TEAM members on Zoom calls are seen laughing when questions are asked but that just shows the disdain we have for the Flight Crew and the quality of the Flight Crew Management Team.

• Cabin Crew that are given leave will have to use their own leave to be back in HK 14 days before their next flight to China. So if you have 3 weeks of leave and wish to go travel, you will only have 1 week overseas and will have to return to HK for the 14 days prior to your next China flight with 7 of those 14 days spent in a Quarantine Hotel at your own expense.

• These answers are very real to hundreds of our flight crew on Zoom meeting. It just shows you the Quality of the Management Team starting with The GMA, nothing but the best at The CPG.

Some facts on the Hong Kong Government Stress NOT caused:

• The CHP does not cause extra stress to Local Employed Pilots. They treat them the same as any Foreign Flight Crew. We at The CPG know that is not true but we do not lobby on the behalf because we just have such a disdain for the Flight Crew.

• We lock up our Local Flight Crew when in HK either on a closed loop or open loop system. We go to the point to lock up the Local Flight Crew when on a layover overseas on a closed or open loop. Even though British Airways Pilots are allowed to go home when they land in London but not our Local Flight Crew. We need to lock them up until they are finished the closed loop (21-28 days) or until they test negative on the 3rd day of quarantine then let out to the public on an open loop. After the Day 3 negative result, on Day 4 you have a duty and the 3 day quarantine starts all over again. We don’t believe this to too stressful for the Local Flight Crew. Some pilots have done anywhere from 3-6 loops or more. We have given a very limited crew time off between loops but that is a very few.

• The CAD allows up to a 30 hour duty day for pilots. When was the last time you flew to London and said as you got off the aircraft “ I think I would like to fly back to HK”. Well that is what the Flight Crew do and we at The CPG believe that is safe, so much so the CAD believe it is safe. (No corruption in the CAD).

• We have the safety of our passengers in mind, we believe that the pilot landing in HK under extreme thunderstorms, mist or a typhoon after being on Duty for 30 hours is not a safety risk. We have a safety risk Manager that bets your risk/safety on this matter. The CAD is fully on board with your safety.

• We don’t believe the Aviation Authorities in other countries should be involved in our matters. We don’t believe Foreign Authorities have any jurisdiction over their own airspace if we are extending the flight duties in that Foreign airspace. At The CPG we believe we are above the laws of foreign airspace of the world. No Foreign Jurisdiction should ever question us on having pilots flying 30 hours over their airspace.

These are only a few stresses that are NOT happening and we don’t believe our pilots will snap, as they are NOT under that much stress.

Just to show the disdain our Flight Operations/Aircrew Management/Rest of The CPG have for our Flight Crew, when 25 year Flight Crew resigns and goes to the Flight Operations Department to close out, the Managers there see him and then turn their back to him. They didn’t even get a handshake. Most Resignee’s just walk away in disgust and decline a departing interview. We don’t really want them anymore, as they are expensive Flight Crew.

We do know of the possibility of some Flight Crew whom may have lost a considerable amount of money in the recent Bitcoin Collapse but we did a Risk Assessment and we don’t believe that will be a factor in the stresses of Flight Crew.

We believe we have the best trained pilots in the world but we do realize that most of them have resigned as the stresses have become unbearable. We don’t believe the pilots left behind still doing this job to make the family budget work and are under extreme stress, we pay them market forces salary. We don’t believe the stresses are happening or any of those will snap.

We will continue to train more cadets to fill that experience void left by our more experienced Flight Crew.

Again WE don’t like to talk about the Elephant in the room, we believe if we just ignored it and go on our merry way the Elephant will leave the room.

Soon the report will come out on MU5735 and the world will look at that report, then look at the stresses of The CPG Flight Crew (which are none), are there any warning signs that this may happen?????????



To My Bonus

The New Management.

Groundhog Day.....
If you think you'll go to bed any night in the years to come and on waking the next morning believe the conditions will improve - you truly belong at CX stuck in the hell that is post PRC Hong Kong.
PRE China Virus ever escaped from the W**** L**, CX People Dept would fill up interview slots in HK and MOST ( sometimes ALL) of the selected "qualified" guinea pigs would fail to even board the flight to HK not even bothering to advise CX..
The word is out and anyone ( even pre cos 18 ) who could do basic math and use google search had figured out the dead end slow bankruptcy that is Hong Kong at CX..

I implore the The New Management to edit his original post and remove the last paragraph which has an implied threat of murder/suicide. This must never be “the elephant in the room”.

This thread does a disservice to the profession. Losing your former rolled gold lifestyle and salary does not justify threatening the killing of 200 innocent people. Worse still, it paints all your colleagues in a very bad light. The general public and media will wrongly tar them all with the same brush.

This kind of foot stamping, diva like tantrums can only result in unintended negative consequences for everyone.

CX is absolutely cactus!
 

CX is absolutely cactus, no turning back now!!

PH, AT and especially GH are just downright repugnant and there is no doubt in my mind that a deal has already been done with Air China!

I agree…if DL at Bloomberg or LW at the SCMP get a hold of this we are ******

Please amend this ASAP

The profession ended when COS 18 was signed in that company. Didn’t they have a pilot nicknamed “GW”

You’re f@cked anyway. Granted that paragraph should be removed and the allusions to the root cause of the MU crash, and, possibly the MH crash, with it. He is, however, drawing attention to said elephant, and, frankly, with incarceration etc.,
the bigger question is how we’ve not had an accident or incident yet as opposed to the fact that we’ve had any.
However the point about record levels of stress is wholly valid, as are the comments about government and company indifference. They have our friends to the North to thank for guidance on that.
And how does the company demonstrate its pastoral care. ? Yoga mats, care kits using expired commissary stock, oh, and have a 50% pay cut to salary, and benefits. It’s not as though you need benefits in the World’s most expensive city anyway.
I take no pleasure vicariously in this. It’s a crying shame. It will be interesting however, to see what sort of company is left at the end of all this, assuming CX can rise from the ashes.

If those remaining can't see what a toxic failure the place has become by now, I would be surprised .

You want to know what the "real" elephant in the room is ? Extrapolate from this as to where you, your career & CX are going (or not).. Time to get real !!
TWO CX Directors:
SUN, Yuquan, was appointed as a Director of the Company in May 2022. He has served as the chief accountant and a member of the Communist Party Group of China National Aviation Holding Corporation Limited, and a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party Committee of Air China since March 2022. He has also been a Director and the Chairman of China National Aviation Capital Holding Co., Ltd., and a Director and the Chairman of China National Aviation Media Co., Ltd. since April 2022.
MA, Chongxian, has been a Non-Executive Director of the Company since June 2021. He is director, general manager and deputy secretary of the Communist Party Group of the China National Aviation Holding Corporation Limited (CNAHC), and concurrently president and deputy secretary of the Communist Party Committee of Air China Limited.

Seriously Flex?

The elephant in the room is that the mainland shareholder who owns 30% of the company has members on the company board? Shock horror!
Have you seen who the airline vice-chairman has been for the past ten years and had a read of his CV?

What’s more interesting with CX is the independent directors. For decades they have voted in lockstep with the Swire directors during board meetings. With all that’s gone on in Hong Kong over the past three years it’ll be interesting to see if they’ve seen the wheel turn and now vote in line with the Air China board members. If they have then the upcoming vote on the airline’s management contract will be very interesting. If Swire lose the management rights then I don’t see Swire keeping their shareholding. Not that it matters, if they’ve lost the management rights they are out of our lives,

Seriously ?
 

These are newly appointed Directors ( comrades ) over and above those previous !! My point stands irregardless of previous sellouts and appointees by Swires.. Swires are now merely puppets at the race track with no dog in the race :uhoh: