Interview is very straight forward. No tricks.

Simulator is where they get you. Only about 20% pass rate currently. They really focus on manual flying the 777 no matter what rating you have.

Medical is tougher than the standard government requirements. Anything that comes up they will ask you for reports or refer you to a specialist.

20% seems really tough lol

Imagine that! Actually expecting pilot applicants to be able to fly an aircraft to a certain standard. Outrageous!

I have a few mates in Cathay training, and the 20% pass rate for the sim is confirmed.

The ability/experience level of the applicants for the current package is abysmal, and it's no wonder. All they can attract now are misfits and desperados, or pilots from countries with highly questionable logbooks and licences.

The trainers/checkers are quite rightly putting their foot down, and demanding the same standards as Cathay used to have.

They would rather see Cathay go down the swanny, which is where it's headed, than be directly or indirectly responsible for a hull loss, which is where it's also headed.

Karma is a biatch.

Do they reply in the given time frame (I was said expect an update after 2-3 weeks) after sending them the training documents??

Yes, they told me in 2 weeks and in two weeks they responded to me

same here. Assessment for October

FYI…

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/h...-b1108017.html

I just got invited for the DEFO interview at Cathay as well. I am currently an FO for a major airline in Canada and have a stay at home wife and a few kids. Based on the responses it seems that it will be hard to afford living in Hong Kong with a family as a Cathay FO. Does anyone have experience moving with family for the FO job? Thanks!

Astonishing one in 5 can pass a B777 screening.
Have they sold the Classic 747 sims?

Fire it up and let them prove their mettle on a real airplane!

Basically if you have a wife and kids, wife not working, paying for expat schooling - I think you'll be on struggle street; you'll never get on the HK housing ladder first of all; just look at rental costs for a modest 3 bedder in Tung Chung it'll easily set you back 30k HKD pm, so what's the whole point in coming to HK as an expat? You can't afford to buy an apartment in HK (this will be your retirement nest egg) and when you head back to Canada when you retire you won't have a house there neither. Just imagine that, worked your whole life till 65 and nothing to show for it, welcome to the new reality of living on COS18.

I don't think you understand how a pension works... what you're asking for is a double pension for day 1 as a second officer and that's not how life works. Second officers rent and save as much as they can until they are ready, first officers buy a little place with their working wife or if they've saved for a nice deposit, Captains have nice big houses. Same as any where else in the world.. in any industry.

And yes you can afford to buy a 3 bedroom house in Tung Chung for say $7.5m, that's just over 30k a month in repayments (and the interest rates are high right now, but they always change!) location location location.. HK is and always will be one of the most expensive cities to buy property in on the planet!

So no a property you bought is not your retirement, your pension that you contributed to for the last 30 years is your retirement.

What 3 bedroom in TC are you referring too? It must be the 3 bed/one bath. As the H/A apartments are still valued at about $10M. Repayments will still set you back about $35000 per month.

The pension is woefully low. To the point that if one retires in Hong Kong, 10 years of pension money will last them 2 years at best.

The property you buy in HK, you’ll sell when you leave and buy a house in your home country when you retire, that’s how it’ll have to work if you are to come to HK. Unless this Canadian DEFO rents in HK for life and mortgages a place in Canada simultaneously.

FYI almost all property in HK is leasehold, all the leases expire in 2047. Then 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the honest reply. Guess I will need to cross Cathay off the list. Are Middle East airlines (Emirates, Qatar, Etihad, etc.) any better for expats with families? Canada is getting very expensive and pilots (especially FOs) make poverty wages here.

Hey folks, what can I expect at the interview, first stage?

some questions about stuff

The fact that you :

1) immediately choose a more expensive house
2) believe any pension on the planet is good for retirement after 10 years of contributions

The above shows a huge issue and a complete misunderstanding on how investing works. You need to look at contributions / growth over the long term and see what the graph does. This notion of "I want to work for CX or any airline for 10 years and retire on a 100m yacht with $10m in the bank is madness"

Investing is a slow game, not a get rich quick scheme.

I never stated it’s a get rich quick. I know how investing works. But when the funds available in the provident fund are junk. My timeline was, 10 years in provident fund from CX will give you about $100K-$150 HKD per year, so that’s about at best $1.5M, that’s without investing, let’s assume an 80% return over the 10 years, that leaves you shy of $3 mill. Like I said, at best 2 years living in Hong Kong. Maybe 3 years

Also the property I stated is enough of a decent size (by Hong Kong standards), in the cheapest complex in the cheapest suburb